


From the Ruined Tower to the Caves of Unknown Horror

by annella



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Crack, Fantasy, Happy Ending, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Mentions of bestiality, Temporary Character Death, but not too graphic, dungeons & dragons AU, it's quite silly really, less graphic than game of thrones, like some graphic violence, none of this is described graphically, only alluded to, with a few dark spots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 10:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5201837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annella/pseuds/annella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared's been adventuring for most of his life. He loves being out on the road with his friends – Jeff the ranger, Jim the dwarven fighter, Aldis the halfling rogue, and Misha the excessively nice cleric – killing monsters and bad guys, finding treasure, and helping people out of sticky situations. It's all part of being a good-hearted barbarian. Then his carefree life is shaken up by the introduction of a scrawny half-elf wizard called Jensen, who joins them for a quest upon which they will encounter horror, true friendship, and a secret buried deep underground...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this dungeons and dragons AU maybe 6 years ago for spn_j2_bigbang. I can't actually remember exactly how long ago I wrote this. But apparently I never posted it to AO3 and today I found it hidden at the bottom of my Google Docs. I read through it, enjoyed it, changed a few words, and here it is. I remember having SO much fun writing it. :)
> 
> If you think I need to update/change the warnings please please let me know. It's been so long since I published any fic I may have forgotten some of the rules for warnings.

The first time Jared meets Jensen, he's quite concerned about Jensen's ability to stay alive. Jared has been doing this adventuring thing for a couple of years now, and he's seen firsthand what sort of dangers are out there. Jensen is tall for a half-elf, but he's also really thin, and his skin has that unhealthy, pasty look of someone who doesn't get out in the fresh air and sunlight enough. Jared figures that wizards must be really useful, despite their apparent weakness, because Jeff had been adamant about finding one to join their party before taking on the ogres infesting one of the nearby villages. In the end, though, Jared figured he should just leave decisions like this to Jeff. Jared's quite content just hitting the monsters until they die.

Jensen doesn't look any more impressed by Jared than Jared is by Jensen. His lip curls a little when Jeff introduces Jared as the barbarian, and Jared is pretty sure he's just been dismissed as a thug who can't even write his own name.

Okay, he sort of _is_ a thug who can't even write his own name, but Jared is more than that. Besides, when Jeff said they were getting a wizard, Jared had been expecting some old guy with a long beard and half-moon spectacles perched on his pointy nose. He'd been expecting robes covered in stars and moonbeams, and perhaps a staff with a knob on the end from which the wizard would shoot flaming balls. Jensen is dressed in a lightweight tunic and trousers just like the rest of the party, his hair is short and brown, showing the slight point of his ears, and he's decidedly lacking in spectacles or other things which would make him look wizardly. He has a staff, but it looks like it's just a stick he found in the forest and decided to keep because it was about the right size for him. He doesn't even have a pointy hat.

"Jared, you need to protect Jensen," Jeff says, and Jared starts paying attention again. He listens glumly as Jeff outlines the ways in which Jensen is apparently helpless, and he's hardly consoled when he notices Jensen looking as annoyed about this as he is. He's wondering again why they needed a stupid wizard with them—having Jensen along is going to be much more trouble than it's worth.

"Can we go now?" he asks grumpily once Jeff is done. He wants to get out there and start hitting ogres.

"Not yet," Jeff says. "Jensen, we're staying in the Red Dragon Inn a few blocks that way. Go tell the innkeeper you're with me, and rest up. Jared, you go find Misha—he's probably in the Temple of Pelor—and bring him back to the inn. Tell him we're leaving tomorrow morning and he needs to be fully stocked with healing spells."

"What are you going to do?"

"I need a new bowstring. I also need to make sure Aldis hasn't got himself into trouble in the marketplace. Jim's already back at the inn, probably making a dent in the ale supply." He strides off, leaving Jared standing there with a wizard. They look at each other for a moment, and Jensen clears his throat.

"I'm, uh. I'm going to the inn." He doesn't wait for Jared's reply before he walks off, and Jared glares at his back before heading off to drag Misha out of the Temple.

 

"... and I don't even know why we _need_ him!" Jared concludes as he and Misha walk back to the inn. Misha's a great person to whine to—he's so innately good that just his presence can be a soothing touch, and he is infinitely patient.

"Jared, we _do_ need a wizard," Misha says calmly. "Do you have any idea how deadly they can be in combat?"

"But they're so _weak_! He doesn't even have any armour, and the only weapon he has is a stick!"

Misha sighs and rubs his face. "He can cast magical armour. And that stick is probably only for show—if he's as good as Jeff says he is, he will rival _you_ for deadly force. Just you wait and see."

"So why do I have to defend him, if he can cast armour on himself?"

"Pelor help me," Misha mutters. "Jared, do you get injured in battle despite your armour?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Jensen isn't as strong as you. He can't deal with the sorts of injuries you would shrug off. _You need to protect him._ " The last words are delivered in the sort of voice which Jared imagines Misha using when he's preaching, and he wonders whether it's okay for clerics to add holy power to their words when they're trying to talk to hard-headed barbarians.

"So... I'm just the guy who protects the wizard, now? I thought I was the front line in battle." He's feeling pretty glum—Jared _loves_ charging into battle, foaming at the mouth and carving his enemies into little pieces. He doesn't want to give that up to stand in front of a wizard all the time.

"No. Not at _all_. We're all going to be looking out for him the same way we look out for each other. Jeff's probably telling Jim the same as he told you, you know. Just try not to let anything big hit him, okay?"

Jared's finally starting to understand. Jeff sometimes thinks that just because Jared isn't very smart means that he has almost no common sense, and often confuses Jared more by just giving him straightforward commands without any explanation. "Thanks," he says, "Jeff never explains anything properly."

"That's okay," Misha says, patting him on the shoulder and being careful not to cut himself on the arsenal strapped to Jared's back. "C'mon, let's go get some rest so you can be in fine fighting form tomorrow."

Jared perks up. He can't wait to get into the field of battle again.

 

"They're paying us for this, right?" Aldis yells as he somersaults behind one of the ogres and slides his dagger into its back. Jared's always amused watching Aldis fight; he's so tiny and dexterous and bouncy. Even though he's not very strong, he's good at finding something's kidneys with his dagger.

"Of course," Jeff says drily. "Do you think I'm stupid?" He sights down his longbow and fires an arrow at the ogre mage lurking in the trees. It hits, and the ogre yelps, the spell it was about to cast fizzling between its paws.

"You're all such lowlifes," Misha says. "We're doing this because it's the right thing to do."

"Speak for yourself," Jim grunts, carving up an ogre with his axe. Jim's a simple sort of guy: fighting, ale, and money. He's not exactly the best company—dwarves have absolutely no sense of humour—but he's good in a fight.

Jared doesn't care about the money. As long as he has somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and a way to keep his weapons and armour in top condition, he's happy. He swings his greataxe at an ogre and takes its head off in one blow; without even thinking about it, he turns on the spot and does the same thing to the ogre which was trying to move in to flank him. He's dimly aware of the sounds of the battle going on around him, but the roaring in his head is loud enough to block out anything which isn't _attack, kill, attack, kill_. Out of the corner of his eye he notices a large group of the monsters heading towards him, and he's about to charge them when a blazing ball of fire suddenly lands in their midst.

The blast almost knocks him off his feet, and is enough to bring him out of his frenzy. He glances around and sees that all the ogres are dead or dying. The ones which had been hit by the fireball are still burning, and Jared turns to gape at Jensen, who's scratching his nose and looking bored.

"Like I said," Misha says, coming up to Jared and laying his hands on to heal the rather serious wounds Jared hadn't even noticed until now. "Deadly damage. You see why he's useful?"

Jared has to concede that maybe Jensen _will_ be of some use, although part of him is bitterly jealous that Jensen killed all those ogres instead of leaving them for Jared. Dammit, _Jared_ is supposed to be the one with the most impressive body count at the end of a battle, not some weedy wizard. Jim always contributes, of course, but he's a much more clinical and thoughtful fighter than Jared. He doesn't leave as many body parts lying strewn about the battlefield as Jared does.

He'll get over it. Jared is pretty bad at holding grudges, because a lot of the time he ends up forgetting why he had them in the first place.

"Aw, hell," Aldis groans from not far away. Jared turns and isn't surprised to see that Aldis is going through the pockets of all the downed ogres. "Man, these ogres have nothing worth _anything_ on them!" He pulls a few sheets of paper out of the mage's tunic and tosses them aside with a grimace. "Just paper and a few measly potions."

"Wait," Jensen says quietly, picking up the papers. "Aldis, these are _spells_."

Aldis freezes. "Spells?" he asks, his voice strangled.

"Yeah, spells. They're worth a lot of money. But I wouldn't recommend selling these." He's squinting at one of the sheets of paper, and he mutters a few words under his breath. The paper glows yellow for a moment, and Jensen grins. "Oh my. This will be _very_ useful."

"What? What is it?" Jared's curious. This is the first time he's seen Jensen smile, and it changes him completely from the dour, perpetually irritated man Jared had assumed him to be.

"This is Cone of Cold," Jensen says. "Very good spell. It's a bit beyond my skills at the moment, but give me a week or two and I'll be able to use it."

"Lots of damage?" Jared hazards, and Jensen nods.

"Wait," Aldis says, still sounding upset. "Are you saying that stuff like that is worth a lot of money?"

Jensen looks a little befuddled. "Well, yes. Of course." Aldis whimpers, and Jeff bursts out laughing. "What did I say?" Jensen asks.

"Nothing, nothing," Jeff says, wheezing and wiping his eyes. "It's just that Aldis is always in charge of looting the bodies because he's the one who can tell what something is worth. Until now, he hasn't bothered keeping 'worthless scraps of paper'."

Jensen's the one who makes a strangled noise this time. "He's been throwing out _magic scrolls_?" he asks, and Jeff nods. Jensen's back to being glaring and moody, but this time his ire is directed at Aldis, who is still whimpering. Jared can't blame him—they've been adventuring together for quite some time, and he's seen Aldis throw out a _lot_ of paper.

"Why didn't you stop me?" Aldis demands of Jeff and Misha. "Misha! You're a cleric, you use scrolls!"

Misha shrugs. "I didn't realise that was what you were doing."

"Nor me," Jeff adds. "Maybe we should be keeping a closer eye on you."

"Perhaps we should assign Jared to looting duties?" Misha says. He looks amused, although not as much as Jeff. "At least he doesn't have an overblown sense of his own intelligence."

"That's because he doesn't _have_ any," Jeff points out. Jared thinks that's a bit unnecessarily mean, but he doesn't say anything, just frowns to himself.

"Jeff," Misha murmurs, and Jeff glances at him briefly before sighing.

"Sorry, Jared," he says, but he doesn't sound sorry at all. Jared just goes to see if there are any worthwhile weapons or armour in the pile which Aldis has accumulated. He's used to Jeff now, and he figures it's easier to just put up with his constant jabs than try to do anything about it.

"Anything good?" Jensen asks, materializing beside Jared.

"No," Jared says, tossing down a low-quality longsword. "Nothing but crappy leather armour, and the weapons aren't anywhere near as good as the ones we have at the moment." He sifts hopefully through the pile again—he's still hoping to get hold of a masterwork greatsword at some point—but these ogres were just rabble. Not a chance. "At least you got a good spell," he says, sitting down on the ground. He looks at his greataxe and frowns at the blood and gunk crusted on it. A wipe on the grass removes the worst of the muck, and he pulls a cloth and a small flask of water from his belt to finish it off.

"Yeah, there's that," Jensen says. "The other spells are pretty good too." He falls silent, and Jared concentrates on cleaning his axe. He's not entirely sure what Jensen could want to talk to him about—they have absolutely nothing in common, and Jeff's probably got Jensen convinced that Jared is nothing but a mindless killing machine.

The silence gets uncomfortable, and eventually Jensen leaves Jared alone. Jared glares at a persistent stain on his axe and rubs the cloth over it harder. He'll need to get it sharpened again when they're back in town.

 

The first thing they do upon returning to Riverton is to present their employer with the large sack of ogre heads Jared collected after the battle. Sir Eric counts them, nods, and pays them eight hundred gold pieces—one hundred for every head. Jeff takes the money before Aldis can get his hands on it, thanks Sir Eric, and they head back out into the blistering heat of the midday sun.

"Right," Jeff says, counting out the coins and giving each of them a share. "Aldis, why don't you go and sell as much of the ogres' gear as you can. Jared, you can go along with him and carry everything. I'm going to see if I can find us another job."

Jared sighs. He'd been hoping to have an ale, but now he's going to have to traipse around the marketplace with Aldis, who refuses to buy or sell anything until he's sure he's getting the better end of the deal.

"Jensen, why don't you—" Jeff starts, but Jensen interrupts. 

"I'll go with Jared and Aldis," he says. "I want to see if I can trade some of these scrolls for ones which I can use."

Jeff nods, and turns to give Misha instructions, but he's already vanished, probably in order to avoid anything Jeff is going to order him to do. Jim's wandered off as well, but that's nothing strange.

 

"Why don't you guys get a pack mule?" Jensen asks. He had spent approximately two minutes conversing with a wizard, during which time some of his scrolls from the ogre mage were replaced with new ones. Now he's following Jared and Aldis around. Jared's sweating; it's hot in the marketplace, and he's carrying a fairly large load.

"We had one once," Aldis says.

"What happened to it?"

"He got caught up in an ambush," Jared says. "It was very sad. His name was Bill."

"It was Jared's fault," Aldis adds.

"It wasn't!" Jared complains angrily. "And it's so unfair that Jeff uses me as the pack mule now. How was I supposed to know a dire bear would go after a mule instead of us? That's _his_ job!"

"It's true," Aldis says to Jensen. "Jeff's the ranger; he's supposed to know about wild animals."

Jensen looks at both of them and doesn't say anything. Jared doesn't particularly feel like talking either, and the rest of their shopping trip is conducted in blessed silence.

 

By the time they get back to the inn, Jeff's found them another job. "Is it from Sir Eric again?" Jared asks hopefully. Sir Eric's been sending them out to kill evil creatures a lot lately. They're Jared's sort of quest—no thinking involved, just go find the monsters and kill them.

"No, it's actually from his patron," Jeff says. "Lady Sera wishes us to investigate strange goings-on in a village a few days from here."

"Oooh! Road trip!" Jared says. He loves getting out on the roads—sleeping rough, keeping watch, being ambushed in the middle of the night by whatever is sneaking through the undergrowth. It's always exciting.

"Aw, man," Aldis groans. "Can we buy horses, maybe? Get there quicker?"

"As nice as that idea is," Jeff says, "you're the only one who can actually ride. So, no. No horses."

"Can we get a pack mule?" Jensen asks. "If we're going to be walking all this way, we should probably have something like that."

Jared glances at him, surprised, but Jensen doesn't look back. Jeff blinks, obviously taken aback. "Yeah, okay," he says, and Jared wants to hug Jensen.

 

"You need to stand up for yourself more," Jensen says to Jared. It's completely out of the blue—they've been on the road for several hours and Jared had been quite happy walking out in front by himself.

"What?"

"Jeff. Why do you let him treat you like that? Like you're—like you're some kind of pack animal. Like your only use is to kill things and carry things."

Jared doesn't look at Jensen. "Because that _is_ my only use. He took me on as a member of this party because I can kill things well and because I can carry the heavy stuff."

"That's a shitty sort of attitude to have, I gotta say."

Jared shrugs. "We all have our uses. Jeff's the scout, the one who knows about the wilderness, and the best archer. Misha heals us and casts spells which help. Aldis sneaks around, finds traps, and opens doors. Jim's good with battle strategy and helps out with hitting things. You attack things with magic. I hit things."

"Don't you ever want to do more than that, though?" Jensen sounds honestly confused.

"Not really. Why, don't you want to use your magic to defeat evil things?"

Jensen huffs. "Don't ever say something like that to my teachers, if you ever get to meet them. They'd roast you alive. Wizardry is all about study. Learning. Most wizards spend their lives studying; very few of us actually go out on adventures."

"Why did you, then?" Jared asks. He casts a sidelong glance at Jensen. He hadn't been expecting Jensen to be able to keep up with the party on the road, but the wizard has been holding his own easily.

Jensen shrugs. "Wanted a change. My older brother used to go off on adventures and write me letters whenever he was in a town. It sounded exciting, so when Jeff came around asking, I put my hand up."

They talk easily; more easily than Jared would have expected. Jared doesn't bother guarding his speech—he hasn't ever had to, especially since he joined this party. Jeff never listens to him, Aldis only hears what he wants to hear and is more likely to make fun of someone than try to help them out with a problem, and Misha sees through him no matter what he says, piercing his muddled thoughts with reason and logic so sharp that if it was anyone but Misha, Jared would resent it. Jim's not too bad at listening, but that's because he almost never talks. Jensen is an unknown, and right now, he seems to be in a sharing frame of mind. Also, he's not talking to Jared like he's an idiot, so that's all Jared needs to open up to him. He tells Jensen of growing up in the cold forests of the north, of spending his days training with weapons and fostering the innate anger of his tribe—the anger that Jared can now focus and use to his advantage in battle.

Jensen listens in silence as Jared rambles, offering nothing but a willing ear, and when Jared's done telling his life story, they travel in silence for a while. Jared glances at Jensen occasionally, at this strange young half-elf who appears about the same age as Jared, but who in reality is probably at least several decades older. He notices that Jensen's getting sunburnt—his face and arms are tinged pink, and he wonders how long it will be before Jensen is the same warm brown colour that Jared has developed over the years. Probably a while. That sunburn is going to be painful until Jensen gets used to being outside.

 

There are roadhouses along the route they're taking. Someone has gone to a great deal of effort to space them out so they are no more than a day's walk apart, and the party comes across one just as the sun is starting to touch the horizon ahead of them. The road is about to enter a large forested area, and the roadhouse sits right on the edge of the trees.

There's nothing fancy about the roadhouse: like all roadhouses, it's a blocky, plain building with a small stable, a common room downstairs, and sleeping quarters upstairs. The roadhouses are spartan and the beds are pretty solid, but the prices are reasonable and it's a lot more comfortable than sleeping rough.

An air of stillness hangs over this one. It's silent, and Jared wonders if it's even open. Usually the front door is propped open, especially in the heat of summer, and it's strange not to see a couple of travellers sitting on the bench outside drinking ale. Jeff looks a little concerned and, after a whispered conversation with Misha, looks at Jared and jerks his head towards the door. Jared rolls his eyes and nods, unslinging his axe as quietly as possible before opening the door.

It's dark and silent inside, and Jared strains to see in the dim light coming through the windows. The first thing he sees clearly is a body on the floor, and from the way it's lying, Jared can tell instantly that it's dead. The sucking at his boots as he steps through what is probably a large pool of sticky blood is also telling. He stops and, failing to see anything in the darkness, closes his eyes to let his other senses take over. He can smell the blood and sweat on the body nearby; it's not long since the person died. There is a faint rustling sound coming from the bar area, and Jared is completely still as he analyses it: two people, one in heavy armour. They're moving towards him, soft-footed, and just as they think they've caught Jared off-guard, he whirls around and attacks.

The others come bursting in the door at the noise, and it's a confusion of blows, cries, and the occasional bursts of light as Jensen throws spells around. One of the attackers screams, " _Boris!_ " at the top of his lungs right before Jim slices him near in half, and there's a sudden silence as both attackers fall to the floor. The one in armour makes a great clang as he topples over, Jared's axe having struck a killing blow to his neck.

"Boris?" Jared asks. He looks around for more attackers, but it's still too dark to see anything properly. Honestly, they're lucky to have escaped without any serious injuries this time around, considering—

"Misha!" Aldis yells, and Jared turns to look at the cleric in time to see him fall to his knees. There's a spreading patch of red staining the side of his white robes, and Aldis just manages to catch him before he hits the ground.

"Oh, shit," Jeff mutters. "Jared, Jim, keep a look out." He rushes over to help Aldis, applying pressure to the wound in Misha's side.

"Will he be okay?" Jared asks, a little shrilly. Without a cleric, they're all screwed, and besides, he really likes Misha. Misha doesn't treat him like an idiot with a axe.

"Keep watch!" Jeff yells back. "There might be more!" He's muttering under his breath and digging in his pouch for something, and Jared forces himself to tear his eyes away to watch the stairs. 

Above the noise and chaos surrounding Misha, Jared hears the sound of heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. They're slow, clanking, the sounds of someone very big wearing heavy armour.

"This must be Boris," Jensen mutters from not far behind Jared. He mumbles something under his breath, and Jared hears the _gling_ of a spell going off. He glances back briefly and sees that Jensen is surrounded by a faint glow. 

Boris turns out to be the biggest guy Jared has ever seen in his entire life, and that's saying a lot coming from a seven foot tall barbarian who was considered short by his family. He barely has time to have misgivings before Boris lets loose a roar that shakes the foundations of the building, and charges him with his huge sword held high.

The blow almost knocks Jared off his feet. He manages to duck out of the way of the second swing, and summons his rage to respond with an attack which would have felled a smaller man. It doesn't seem to have any effect, but Jared continues to swing grimly at the guy in the hopes of making a dint in his armour. Jim's not having much more luck, and Jared hopes that one of them will get a lucky blow in soon.

There's a flash of light from behind Jared, and a sparkling ray flits past Jared and hits the giant square in the centre of his breastplate. Boris frowns and brushes it off, swinging his sword at Jared again, but the blow lacks the power it did before. There's another flash, another ray, and Boris looks concerned when he suddenly seems to find it very difficult to raise his sword. At the same time, Jared feels Jensen's light touch on his shoulder, and all of a sudden, he feels much, much stronger.

Boris quails a little when Jared raises his axe for the killing blow. It splits his head open, and his body crumples to the ground in a heap.

"That was awesome," Jared says, turning to Jensen. He's panting, covered in blood and bits of Boris's brain, but that? That was _awesome_.

"You're disgusting," Jensen pronounces, wrinkling his nose and taking a step back.

"I'm a barbarian," Jared points out. "What the hell were those spells, anyway?"

"Two Rays of Enfeeblement on Boris," Jensen says nonchalantly. "And one Bull's Strength on you."

"Awesome," Jared says again, under his breath.

"He's not useless," Jim notes clinically, and looks puzzled when Jared laughs.

"Hey, you're bleeding," Jensen says, suddenly concerned. Jared looks down at himself, and is unsurprised to see that there's a long gash on his left arm, laying it open almost to the bone. He's actually surprised that he doesn't have a headache; he was lucky his helmet had managed to deflect the worst of Boris's first blow.

"I'll be fine," Jared says dismissively. He pulls a cloth out of his backpack and ties it one-handed around the worst part of the wound. He'll do for now; he's not bleeding to death. Unlike Misha. Jared belatedly remembers the plight of their cleric, and he rushes over to see how he's going.

"He's still alive," Jeff says grimly. "I've used my only Cure spell on him, but all it's done is stop him bleeding to death. He needs more."

"Don't you have any potions?" Jensen asks, and Jeff shakes his head.

"We tend to rely on Misha." Jeff sighs. "Next time we're in a town, we're getting some potions. I don't care how much they cost. Jared, can you go make sure upstairs is safe? We need to get him to a bed."

For once, Jared doesn't feel a stab of resentment at Jeff giving him orders. He bounds upstairs and finds it almost completely empty, apart from one room in which he discovers a badly-wounded man lying unconscious on one of the beds. He pokes him, but the man doesn't wake up, and Jared considers him to be of no threat. "All clear!" he yells, and about a minute later, Jeff and Jim come up the stairs, carefully carrying Misha. They lay him on a bed in the nicest room, and Jeff sits down at the foot, staring at Misha's unconscious form.

Jared's never seen him look so concerned, and he feels a tight wave of fear wash over him. Jared's not used to feeling fear, and he's so disconcerted that he has to sit down. "Will he be okay?" he asks quietly, and Jeff glances at him. For once, he doesn't look impatient with Jared's questions.

"Yeah, he'll be okay," he replies. "We'll just need to rest up a bit. Once he wakes up he can cast a healing spell on himself."

There's nothing much for Jared to do upstairs, so he heads back down to the common room and sets about clearing the bodies away. The one who had already been dead when they arrived at the roadhouse looks like an unlucky passerby, and Jared places his body on the far side of the room. As he's going through Boris' belongings, he's elated to find that the giant sword is in fact a greatsword, and he hefts it experimentally before going to wipe his blood off it and adding it to the weapons strapped to his back. He also finds an odd pair of gauntlets, which he sticks in his belt.

"You want me to take a look at those?" Jensen asks. Jared curses, startled at Jensen's sudden appearance, but manages to hide it when he hands the gauntlets over to him. Jensen squints at them, muttering a couple of words, and for a moment, the gauntlets glow. "They're magical," Jensen says, handing them back, and Jared grins. 

"Any idea what they do?" he asks.

Jensen shrugs. "No idea. I can Identify things, but the spell is pretty expensive. Best to save it up until we've got a few mystery items. You can wear those now if you want, but they might be evil."

"Misha will know," Jared states. All Misha needs to do is glance at something and he can tell whether or not it's appropriate for them to be using. Jared had once had to give up a very nice pair of boots, just because Misha had turned green and had to sit down for half an hour after looking at them.

"By the way," Jensen adds, "that sword is magical."

"Really?" Jared says excitedly. "That's awesome! Oh man, you have no idea how long I've wanted a magical greatsword." He resists the urge to draw it so he can hug it a little, and Jensen grins at him.

With Jensen's help, they clear the bodies away fairly quickly. Jensen even cleans up the pool of blood using a spell with an incredibly complicated name which Jared promptly forgets. Behind the bar, there's an open trapdoor leading down into a dark cellar. Jared can smell blood—and worse—coming from below, and he rummages around behind the bar for a lantern before heading carefully downwards.

It's silent in the cellar; Jared listens carefully for the signs of someone hiding down there, but there is no hint of breathing or the tiny noises of someone trying not to move. There are sacks of dry goods, barrels of ale, and various other items including a large set of cupboards on the far wall. Jared shines the lantern towards the floor and sees large scuff marks in the dirt. There are bloodstains too, leading towards the cupboard.

Even though he's expecting the worst, Jared is still horrified by what he finds when he opens the cupboard. The bandits had obviously been unable to fit the bodies in easily, and had cruelly hacked them into pieces, making it hard for Jared to work out just how many bodies there were. He eventually counts three; a man, a woman, and a young boy, obviously the owners of the roadhouse. One of the boy's eyes is hanging limply from its socket, and Jared feels sick. The boy's dead eyes stare at him.

"Find anything?" Jensen calls from up the stairs. Jared doesn't reply; he closes the door and heads back up the stairs. "Jared? What is it? You don't look too good."

Jared sits down at one of the tables and takes his helmet off, rubbing a hand through his sweaty hair. He feels like he needs a bath after what he's seen. "Don't go down there," he mutters. "They're... they killed the owners and their little boy."

Jensen sits down next to him and hands him a water flask. Jared drinks deeply, trying to wash the taste of death out of his mouth. "Are you okay?" Jensen asks quietly.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Jared replies. "Just... y'know, I've seen a lot of really awful stuff, but sometimes things still get to me and catch me off guard."

"I'd take that as a good thing," Jensen says, patting Jared on the shoulder. "You don't want to get too used to the really nasty things. That's the sort of thing that leads to shifting morals."

"I guess," Jared sighs. 

There's a commotion outside, and the front door suddenly bursts open. Several soldiers wearing tunics emblazoned with the emblem of the County Guard rush in, and Jared and Jensen quickly find themselves surrounded.

"Hey, what gives?" Jensen protests, but the soldiers don't reply. One of them calls, "All clear!" and a few moments later, a man dressed in full armour enters. Everything about him screams 'Captain of the Guard' and Jared tries not to make any sudden movements. He doesn't want to get accidentally skewered by an over-enthusiastic soldier.

"What's going on?" Jeff asks, coming down the stairs. He takes a step back and raises his hands when he suddenly finds three swords levelled at him.

"Are you in charge?" the captain asks, and Jeff nods. "You want to tell us what happened here?" The captain glances around the room, and his gaze falls upon the three bodies stacked in the corner. He walks over to them and rolls the top one off the pile to examine his face and clothing.

"Is that them?" one of the soldiers asks, and the captain nods.

"Were there any others?" he asks Jeff.

"One more. He's upstairs, not in very good shape. Unlikely to last the night unless our cleric magically wakes up from his wounds."

The captain nods. "Excellent. We've been tracking these guys for weeks; you just saved us some work."

"Bandits?"

His mouth set in a grim line, he nods again. "Not just bandits, though. They enjoyed mutilating the bodies of the people they attacked."

Jared clears his throat. "The owners are in the cellar." He swallows. "In the—in the cupboard."

The captain looks at him, sympathy in his eyes. He murmurs an instruction to two of his men, who both turn a little pale before heading into the cellar.

"There's a reward, of course," the captain says gruffly once the bodies in the cellar have been dealt with. 

"There's no need—" Jeff starts, and Jared's glad Aldis isn't there to try to punch Jeff in the face. That has happened before, and it had been hard not to laugh at Aldis trying to punch someone twice his height.

"No, you have no idea how much of a blight these men have been," the captain interrupts. He scribbles a note on some parchment and hands it to Jeff. "Give that to the Commander of the Guard when you get to back to Riverton. He'll reward you."

"Well, thanks," Jeff says. "We would have done it without a reward, so this is very much appreciated."

 

They spend the night in the roadhouse. Jared tosses and turns on his narrow bed; he can't get the images from the cellar out of his mind. Halfway through the night, he gives up on trying to sleep, and quietly gets out of bed. Jensen and Aldis are in the other beds in the room; Aldis is snoring softly and Jensen's lying on his stomach, his face buried in the pillow and his hair all messed up. Jared doesn't wake them as he pads downstairs and fills himself a cup of ale from the barrel behind the counter.

"Rough day?" Jeff asks, and Jared jumps at the sound of his voice. He hadn't been paying attention; hadn't realised that Jeff was down here too.

"Yeah, just—" Jared doesn't know how to finish that sentence, and he rubs a hand over his face and through his hair.

"I saw the bodies the soldiers took out of the cellar," Jeff says quietly. He sips his drink in silence for a few moments. "I had to go outside to throw up."

Jared swallows. "That boy, he can't have been more than five years old."

"Some people, huh?"

Even after years of adventuring, Jared still doesn't understand what drives evil people. "They—they killed him and chopped him up, why would they do that? Those bandits, they weren't even monsters, they were just _people_. I don't understand."

"Pray to your God that you never do," Jeff murmurs. Jared can't remember the last time Jeff talked to him like this; usually, if Jared said he didn't understand something, Jeff would make a comment about his stupidity. He's not used to this—this _kindness_.

"Try to get some sleep," Jeff says eventually, patting Jared on the shoulder. "I'll keep watch."

 

By morning, Misha has woken up and healed himself. Jared's glad of it; he's itching to get out of this place, which smells like death and horror. He'd finally managed to get back to sleep the previous night, but it hadn't been a good sleep. His neck aches, and he twists this way and that as they eat breakfast, trying to ease the pain.

"Here, let me," Jensen says quietly, coming to stand behind him. His hands are firm on Jared's neck, an inner strength in his fingers which Jared hadn't been expecting. 

"Oh man, you're good at this," Jared groans. Jensen's fingers go right to the tense muscles, kneading and rubbing away the pain.

"I used to stay up all night studying," Jensen murmurs, his voice low and warm in Jared's ear, "and I would get the worst headaches the next day. My, uh, friend used to do this for me."

Jared tries to speak, but the only sounds he's able to produce are garbled groans. He feels like he could fall asleep again. After a few minutes, Jensen stops, and Jared opens his eyes again. Aldis and Misha are staring at him, wide-eyed. "What?" he says.

"Nothing," Aldis replies, and Misha gives him his enigmatic half-smile which usually means Misha knows something that Jared doesn't. Jensen sits down on the other side of the table and doesn't look at Jared until it's time for them to leave. Jared feels like he is missing something important. He shrugs it off; that happens quite a lot, and someone usually tells him what's going on if it becomes obvious that he is still clueless.

The day passes without incident, which is a relief for Jared. He's still feeling run-down from his lack of sleep the night before, and for once, he's only too happy to not have any evil creatures to kill. He's even looking forward to sleeping in an actual bed again, but his hopes are dashed when they arrive at the next roadhouse just as the sun has gone down.

"Bandits?" Aldis asks, eyeing the burned-out wreckage. Jeff's picking his way over the ruins, and he occasionally leans down to examine something.

"Possibly," he replies. "This happened a few days ago, at least. Everything's cold."

Jared sighs. So much for a warm, comfortable night. Jensen looks even more irritated, and Jared wonders whether this is his first time sleeping rough. "Should we pitch the tents here?" he asks Jeff. It's a pretty dismal sight; the fire had scorched many of the trees surrounding the clearing the roadhouse was in, and it was probably only through sheer luck that a full-blown forest fire didn't occur.

Jeff considers for a moment. "Let's go back up the road a little. I saw a clearing just off the road about a mile back which would make a good campsite."

"We have tents?" Jensen asks Jared in a low voice as they start back the way they came. "I thought we'd be sleeping on ferns with just blankets to keep us warm."

Jared laughs. "Not likely! Nah, we spend quite a lot of time sleeping outside. We got some really good tents a couple of months ago."

"Thank the Gods," Jensen groans. "I am not cut out for sleeping somewhere cold and wet."

"If you're stiff in the morning, I can give you a rub," Jared offers. Jensen inhales sharply, chokes, and Jared spends a few moments thumping him on the back and wondering what it was he had said.

 

It's well after midnight when Jared is awoken by someone shaking his shoulder.

"Hey, Jared," a voice says softly, "wake up. Something's out there."

Jared is instantly wide awake, and he nods to Aldis, who had been on watch. He doesn't bother with armour, just grabs his sword and follows Aldis out of the tent they're sharing with Jensen. It's a clear night, and the half-moon filters through the trees to cast a dim light on their camp. Aldis is right—Jared can hear the shuffling of several creatures approaching from the forest.

"Wake the others," he tells Aldis, who nods and disappears into the other tent where Misha, Jim and Jeff are sleeping. Jared can almost make out the shapes of the intruders, but it's the smell that alerts him to what they're about to face. The dull, sickly stench of the grave fills Jared's nostrils, and he hisses, "We've got undead!"

"Aw man!" he hears Aldis groan from behind him. "I hate undead. Stabbing them in the back doesn't do a damned thing."

"Get Misha, you idiot!" Jared almost yells back. He can see them now, a ragged line of skeletons shuffling towards them, and Jared would laugh at how easy they look to defeat if he didn't know just how tough they could be.

"Shut up! I'm trying to sleep!" Misha yells.

"Undead!" Jared repeats.

"Oh, for the love of—" Misha growls, and Jared glances over his shoulder to see Misha stick his head out of the tent flap and point a finger at the advancing skeletons. There's a bright light, a low hum, and each of the skeletons explodes into a small pile of ash.

"I love it when he does that," Aldis murmurs as Misha vanishes back into his tent with a grumble about interrupted sleep. Jim and Jeff hadn't even had time to get out of the tent.

"That was quick," Jensen says as Jared crawls back into their tent.

"Yeah, Misha's good with undead," Jared replies. 

Jensen doesn't reply; he's staring at Jared, his eyes a little wide. Jared waves a hand in front of his face. "Jensen?"

Jensen blinks. "Um. Yes?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm good. Just—just need to get back to sleep." Jensen licks his lower lip. "You're not wearing your armour," he says.

"Uh, no," Jared says. He's getting pretty confused by the way Jensen's acting. "I didn't have time to put it on." He looks down at his bare chest; Jensen's staring is making him a little uncomfortable. 

Jensen blinks a few times and wipes his hand over his face. "See you in the morning," he says. Without another word, he rolls himself into his blankets and falls asleep. Things are getting weird. Jared decides to think about it again tomorrow; he's still tired from his lack of sleep the night before.

 

It takes several days to get to the town of Twoforks, where strange things are occurring. They leave the forest behind and move into rolling hills covered with open fields. Jared's relieved; he prefers open countryside to the stifling forests where he can't see more than a dozen metres in front of him. The air is fresher, crisper, and the warm sun once again beats down on the party as they make their way along the road. It's not long before they start to see signs of habitation again—small farmer's cottages not far from the road, a few ploughed fields, the occasional farmer trudging along the road with a cart. 

"Look," Jensen says, pointing out at the field to their right. The party stops and everyone looks, but Jared can't figure out what Jensen's pointing at.

"It's a farmer ploughing his field?" he says, frowning.

"He's wielding the plough himself," Jensen says. "I haven't seen any farmers using animals. This area seems to farm a combination of livestock and produce, judging from the fields, but we haven't seen a single animal. Half the fields are lying fallow."

"Strange," Jeff murmurs. "No cows, no sheep, no horses."

"Maybe that's part of what's going on around here," Aldis says.

"We'll find out soon enough," Jeff says. "We should be at Twoforks by mid-afternoon."

As they continue, Jared starts noticing other strange things. Half of the small cottages they pass seem to be abandoned, and whenever they see another person on the road, their party is given a wide berth, even if the other person has to trek far into the fields to avoid them.

The town of Twoforks can hardly be called a town. From the road, it seems like nothing more than a badly-fortified village. It's perched on top of a hill, and there's a clumsily-built stockade surrounding it, with guard towers every dozen or so metres. Jared had noticed guard towers on the approach, as well, but they had been unmanned.

The gates appear unguarded as well, but as they approach, someone calls down at them from one of the towers on either side of the gates.

"Hey! Stop! What do you want?" A face peers over the edge of the wooden structure. It's rough-hewn, unshaven, and topped by a helmet.

"We were sent by Lady Sera in Riverton," Jeff says loudly. "We were told you needed assistance with some kind of problem."

There's a muttered conference from the guard tower, then the head appears again. "You can go in, but you gotta leave your mule behind."

"What?" Jared exclaims. "No! He might get attacked!"

"If you take it in, it _will_ get attacked," the guard says darkly. "Tie it up outside the gate, no one'll go near it."

Jared's reluctant to let Bill Two out of his sight in a place which doesn't seem to like animals, but Jeff nods at him, so he ties the mule up outside the gate. There's a hitching post and a couple of feeding troughs, no doubt left over from a time when animals were welcomed in Twoforks, and Bill Two's expression of dislike fades when Jared fills the troughs up with water from a nearby pump and oats from the baggage.

"Who's in charge around here?" Jeff calls up to the guy in the tower.

"You wanna talk to Sam," the guard replies. He yells at someone to open the gate, and the rickety structure slowly opens outward. "She's probably in the tavern. You can't miss it."

Twoforks is almost derelict. There are burnt-out buildings everywhere, and the main road—if it can be called that—is a dusty strip of dead earth winding its way through the depressing collection of buildings.

The guard was right; the tavern is hard to miss. It's the only building with two storeys in the entire town, and there are several people sitting on a bench outside, mugs of ale in their hands. They watch the party suspiciously as they head towards the door and as Jared gets closer, he notices that they're showing definite signs of having been in battles recently. The one on the far right is missing several fingers and has an ugly gash across his face, and another one's face is still purple and swollen from a wound which looks like it came from a club, possibly with barbs in it.

"No cleric here, obviously," Misha says quietly, and Jeff nods. 

Despite the fact that it is late in the day, the tavern is almost empty. A barman stands at the rickety bar, wiping a cloth which looks like it has seen better days across the stained boards. There are a few tables scattered about, and Jared counts five people total in the room. As one, they all turn to watch as the party enters. It couldn't be more stereotypically small-town if it tried, and Jared covers a smile.

"We're looking for Sam," Jeff announces, and there are a few mutters from the tables before a woman with dark blonde hair and wearing a battered breastplate stands up. There's a brutal scar across her face and right through one eye, which is missing. The flesh is twisted and torn, and Jared's surprised she managed to only lose an eye, not her life, to whatever gave it to her.

"I'm Sam," she says in a bored voice. "Whaddaya want?"

"We hear you're having some kind of trouble here," Jeff says carefully. They haven't exactly been welcomed with open arms, and Jared can understand his caution. "Lady Sera down in Riverton sent us."

Sam brightens up. "You're here to get rid of the demons?"

"Demons?" Misha says sharply. "No one said anything about demons!"

"No one said anything about _anything_ ," Aldis mutters. Jared nods; all they had been told was that Twoforks was under attack and needed help. No one had been able to tell them exactly what they were under attack _from_.

"Well," Sam says slowly, "they're not technically demons. At least, I don't _think_ they are. Why don't we go talk somewhere else?" She glances around at the others in the bar, who don't really seem very interested anyway, but Jeff nods, and Sam leads them out the back to a small courtyard. It looks like it used to be a pleasant place to sit, but the seats are ramshackle, there's shrubby weeds growing all over the ground, and it stinks of ale and urine.

"So," Jeff says, sitting down on one of the rickety seats. It sways alarmingly for a moment, threatening to pitch Jeff off, but he plants his feet firmly on the ground and stays upright through apparent sheer force of will. "Demons, huh?"

Sam scratches at the scar on her face. It doesn't look very old; it's still red and inflamed in places. "We call them that because we don't know _what_ they are. It's actually more like a disease."

"A disease?" Misha interjects, his eyes sharp.

"I don't even know if you could call it _that_ ," Sam says. "Look, I'll tell you all about it, and you can make up your own minds." She sits down on one of the other seats and chews her lip silently for a moment.

"It started about six months ago. The farms on the edges of our borders were attacked by creatures, we didn't know what they were. There were only a couple of survivors, and we didn't actually believe them at first. They said they were—" Sam waves her hands in the air, "—demons. Misshapen and evil. It sounded insane. Our cleric did the best he could to help them, and we strengthened fortifications and patrols for the remaining farms."

"You have a cleric?" Misha asks.

"I'll get to that," Sam says grimly. "Anyway, we had the surviving farmers and their families in town until the threat was over. But they got sick."

Jared tries not to squirm. Misha likes to tease him sometimes about how he, a giant barbarian tough enough to withstand almost anything, is scared of illness. But Jared can't help it; he'll happily face down a horde of charging orcs, but tell him he's got to be around a sick person and he'll make any excuse he can think of not to be there.

Sam continues with the tale. "Our cleric had never seen anything like it. They—they fevered, they screamed in pain, and then they _changed_. A few days after they arrived in town, they'd become the same as the demons who attacked them."

"Wait," Jeff interrupts. "They _became_ the demons?"

Sam nods. "These demons... you won't believe me without seeing them. And this was just the beginning. They kept attacking. They kept spreading their disease. I'm guessing you noticed that the town is mostly empty, right? That's because we've had to kill more than half of our own people, when they became infected."

"What about the animals?" Misha asks. "Is this why there are no animals around?"

"Exactly," Sam says with a nod. "The disease doesn't affect animals the same way it does us, but they spread it. We had to kill all our livestock, and no animal is allowed into the town."

Jared stands up. "Bill Two!" he exclaims. "I have to go see if he's okay!"

"Don't," Sam says. "You'd know if he was infected. My guards know the signs; they'll take care of him if he shows any of them."

Jared sits down, not quite satisfied by this. He doesn't want Bill Two to die; he's quite enjoyed not being the pack mule anymore.

"Where do these demons come from?" Jensen asks curiously.

"We don't honestly know," Sam concedes. "All we can say for sure is that most of the attacks come from the north. No one's been able to track them; hell, most people are too scared to."

"So they're of this plane?" Sam looks confused, and Jensen clarifies: "They didn't appear out of a portal? They're creatures of this world?" Sam nods.

"We'll set out tomorrow," Jeff says. "Is there anywhere in town we can stay?"

Sam shrugs. "The inn burnt down during an attack. There's an empty house you can stay in, though."

"No church?" Misha asks.

"Not anymore. The cleric was infected while he tried to help the first victims. We've burnt every place in town which was tainted by these beasts and unfortunately, the church was one of those places." She sighs wearily. "I'm not even the captain here. I'm only in charge because every single one of our commanding officers died. I'm a _corporal_. And there's nothing I can do to stop this place from falling the next time we get attacked."

"We'll do our best," Jeff says gruffly. 

"We can't pay," Sam says abruptly. "We got nothing here."

"We're not doing this for pay," Misha says, and Jeff places a firm hand on Aldis' shoulder before he can complain.

"Well, we kind of are," Jeff clarifies, "but we're being paid by Lady Sera."

"That's a relief," Sam says. "C'mon, I'll show you where you can sleep."

 

Jared's on third watch that night, and the sun is just starting to crest the horizon when he hears a rising clamour coming from the direction of the town gates. Someone blows a horn, loudly and repeatedly, and when Jared goes into the house they're staying in, he finds everyone already awake.

"What's going on?" Jeff asks sleepily.

"No idea," Jared says, and goes back outside. A small group of soldiers rush past him, and he tags along with them. "What's going on?" he asks as they head towards the gates.

"Attack," one replies grimly. "It's the demons. They hit a farm not far out."

There's a small group of soldiers milling around the gates. Sam arrives just as Jared does, still buckling her armour on. She looks like she hasn't had any sleep, which wouldn't surprise Jared in the least.

"Good, you're here," Sam says bluntly. "Where are the rest of your friends?"

"Still coming," Jared says, and his party turns up a few minutes later with all their gear. They're still sleep-rumpled, and Jared notices that Jensen in particular does not look happy about being roused earlier than usual.

"Now that everyone is here," Sam starts, "here's what's going on. The Brewer farm was attacked during the night. No survivors, thankfully, but the patroller who found them is going to be having nightmares for a while. So are the rest of you, I guess. They're about two hours' walk away, so let's get moving." She hitches her belt up and adjusts her sword. As they're leaving the town, Jared hastily unties Bill Two. He gets some glares from the soldiers, who all pointedly move away from him, but Jared doesn't care. He's not leaving their mule alone in a town where people kill the animals out of self-defence.

 

The day is calm and clear—it seems too nice a day for horrendous things to have happened. Jared passes the journey talking idly to Jensen, who had looked a bit white-faced at the prospect of dealing with the aftermath of a demon attack. Jensen seems grateful for the distraction and he's almost chatty, telling Jared all about what it means to him to be a wizard. Jared's eyes start to glaze over fairly quickly, but he keeps listening. It's quite entertaining to see Jensen so animated. Jared hasn't met many half-elves—they tend to stick to their own kind due to being caught in the world between two distinct races. Jensen's handsome in an ethereal, almost alien way, with his narrow face, his large, tilted eyes in a vivid green, and his sharply pointed ears. Jared's been finding himself increasingly intrigued by Jensen's appearance, and sometimes wants to touch his ears and trace the shape of his face.

There's an eerie calm hanging over the farm when they arrive. From far away it looks normal, safe, undamaged; but the closer they get, the more evident the destruction becomes. There are splashes of blood on the exterior walls, and Jared can smell death on the air.

"I'll go in first," Sam says grimly. She takes a deep breath and opens the front door. She's only in there for a few seconds before she comes out again, white-faced.

"You okay?" one of the soldiers asks. Sam nods, then shakes her head. She goes around the side of the house, out of sight, and they all hear her retching. When she comes back she takes the waterskin offered to her by a soldier and rinses her mouth out.

"Wanna take a look?" Sam asks Jeff.

"Not particularly," Jeff replies, "but I think I need to." He looks at the party. "None of you have to come," he says.

"I'll come," Jared offers, and Jim gives Jeff a nod as well. Misha, Aldis and Jensen all look reluctant. Jeff shoots Jared and Jim a grateful look, and they enter the cottage together.

The first thing that strikes Jared is the silence. He's seen dead bodies before, he's heard the insistent, grinding buzz of the insects which feed upon them. There aren't any here, and it's almost more terrifying than the actual scene.

He hears Jeff muttering a prayer as they look around the room. The walls are splashed with blood and worse, and the dirt floor is so soaked in blood that it's almost turned to mud. There are body parts decorating the walls—the demons have apparently torn the inhabitants limb from limb and affixed their parts to the wall as grotesque trophies. There's no sign of heads anywhere, and Jared's gaze is irresistibly drawn to a large cauldron in the fire pit. There's a lid covering it, and Jared and Jeff exchange looks before Jeff cautiously goes over to it to check the contents.

 

"Are you okay?" Jensen asks Jared. Jared shakes his head and has another drink. He wishes more than anything else that he hadn't looked inside that cauldron. He's certain that he's no longer going to be haunted by the dead boy back at the roadhouse; instead, his nightmares are now going to be made up of the sight of the three half-cooked, chewed heads of the people who lived in the cottage. 

Jensen sits down next to him and pats him on the back. "They're burning it down, look," he says, and Jared turns to see the first flames licking at the walls of the cottage.

"Good," he says grimly. He stands up and brushes himself off; he really needs to kill something right now.

"This is what they do," Sam is saying to Jeff when Jared and Jensen rejoin them. "This is why we live in fear."

"I'm not surprised," Jeff says. "But look, I think one of them might still be alive."

"Alive?"

Jeff nods. "There were only three bodies in that cottage. One of the soldiers told me that there were four people living here. A couple and their two daughters. Emma was ten, and Lucy was seventeen."

"Lucy wasn't there?" Sam asks, her face brightening. "She could still be alive, then."

"If they took her instead of killing her, she's probably still alive." Jeff beckons Sam to follow him around the back of the house. Jared and Jensen follow curiously. "Look," Jeff says, pointing at the ground, "they left tracks. I'm pretty sure I can follow them."

"Then follow them," Sam says grimly. "Hunt them down. Kill them. I don't care what it takes."

"We will," Jeff promises. He goes back to the tracks, and it only takes a few minutes for him to spot which direction they're going in. "Back towards the town," he says. "They must have branched off somewhere, though, because otherwise we would have seen them."

"We're leaving!" Sam calls, and the soldiers scurry to get up and straighten their equipment. "We'll go with you until you see where they went off the road," she says to Jeff. "I'd gladly go the entire way, but someone's gotta defend what's left of this town."

 

They've been walking for about half an hour when the attack comes. "Look out!" yells one of the soldiers, and everyone ducks as a spear flies into their midst. It only just misses one of the soldiers, who backs away from where it landed with a look of terror on his face.

"Don't touch the weapons," Sam calls over the noise of everyone drawing their swords. Jared has no idea why that would be a bad thing, but he doesn't think it would be a good idea to test it out.

"Where are they?" he asks, and the soldier who called the warning points to a nearby hill. Jared squints at it in the bright sunlight, and manages to spot movement.

"How are they going to attack?" Jeff asks calmly, drawing an arrow from the quiver on his back and sighting down his bow. Jared's vaguely aware of Jensen standing just behind him, casting a spell. A moment later, Jared feels a light touch on his shoulder, followed by a sensation of strength flowing through his body. Jim's standing nearby hefting his dwarven waraxe; it's a weapon Jared would love to use one day, but he's heard dwarves get angry when non-dwarves use their racial weapons.

"Spears first, then they come in with swords and teeth," Sam says. As if they'd heard her, there's a flurry of movement from the hill, and a wave of spears flies towards them. One soldier is impaled through the middle and another takes a blow to the arm, and then there is a small group of creatures running towards them. Jared can hear dogs barking, and it's only when the creatures get closer that he can see why.


	2. Chapter 2

"What the—" Jeff cuts himself off and calmly draws an arrow. He fires it into the creatures charging towards them and follows it up with another. One of the creatures falls, but there are almost a dozen to replace it.

They have the heads of dogs; human bodies with dog heads. Jared can see why Sam said they would have to see them to believe it. They look savage, with their sharp teeth bared and spittle flying. Their eyes are mad and red, and Jared feels no hesitation as he reaches inside himself to channel all his rage. It doesn't take much; the scenes from the cottage are still fresh in his mind.

There's a satisfying _crunch_ as his sword finds the throat of the first creature to attack him. Jared almost removes its head with the blow, and he quickly whirls to slice at another one behind him. Dark red blood sprays out in an arc, and Jared feels a few drops splash his arm. He ignores it and lands the killing blow, barely pausing to take a breath before striking the next one.

The attackers are taken out fairly quickly—they only barely outnumbered Jared's party and the soldiers from Twoforks, and between Jared's and Jim's weapons and Jensen's magic, the creatures struggle to last more than a minute before they're all lying dead on the grass.

"Everyone okay?" Sam says sharply once it's clear that the creatures are dead.

"Not me," grunts the soldier who took the spear through the arm before the battle. "And Hicks is dead. Better leave me, too. Y'all know what happens now."

Sam nods, a pained look on her face. The wounded soldier kneels on the grass next to his dead comrade, and gets out a small knife.

"What's going on?" Misha asks sharply.

"The demons' weapons are tainted," Sam says. "You get hit by one, you get sick, you turn into one of them."

"Surely there's _something_ I could do."

Sam shakes her head. "Our old cleric tried everything. He could never remove the taint."

"I _have_ to try," Misha says, his voice urgent. He kneels beside the wounded man and takes his arm gently to examine the wound.

"Don't try to stop him," Jeff says to Sam. "This is what he does. He really does have to try; he'd never forgive himself if he didn't."

Misha mutters a few words and gestures to the man's arm, and his hands glow for a moment before it spreads to the man, eventually suffusing his whole body. The man closes his eyes and sighs.

"Did that work?" Sam asks, looking amazed. Misha stands up and brushes himself off.

"Of course," he says. "I just removed the disease. Didn't your cleric ever try that?"

"Couldn't," says the soldier Misha just healed. "He wasn't very experienced—I think they sent him out here as punishment for something, and all he could do was a healing spell now and then." He looks down at his arm, which had been oozing green and black. The wound is now pink and bleeding freely, and Misha casts a minor healing spell to finish up. "I thought I was dead," the soldier mumbles. "Thank you."

"Anyone else hurt?" Sam asks, looking around. No one speaks, but Sam's eyes fall on Jared's arm. "That your blood?" she asks, and Jared shakes his head. "Wipe it off! Quick! They don't even have to wound you to infect you. Even just touching their weapons is enough to do it."

Jared feels a tight ball of fear in his stomach. He frantically tears a strip off his shirt and douses it with water from his waterskin before scrubbing it over his arm, removing every trace of blood. Misha comes and stares hard at him before pronouncing him apparently okay.

"Apparently?" Jared asks sharply.

"Let me know if you feel unwell tomorrow morning and I'll heal you up. No need to panic."

Jared tries not to panic, tries really hard not to think about the fact that he might have a disease which will turn him into a dog-headed monster. They're getting ready to move on—the bodies of the demons have been piled up and set alight, along with their weapons—when Jensen materializes beside Jared.

"You'll be fine," he says quietly. "You're stronger than everyone else here combined." He pats Jared's arm reassuringly, and Jared doesn't get a chance to reply before Jensen's moved away. His arm is warm where Jensen had touched him, and Jared smiles.

Jeff is walking slowly around the area the creatures attacked from, examining their tracks. At one point he crouches down on the ground and pokes at the grass with his knife before standing up and brushing himself off. "They went this way," he says. "It looks like these ones were left to discourage pursuit. The rest—I make it about a dozen or so—carried on. Looks like it's been about half a day or so."

"You can follow them?" Sam asks, and Jeff nods. "Then do it. You got enough supplies?"

Jeff looks at Aldis, who nods. "We're good," he says. "I went shopping last night." 

They part ways with a minimum of fuss, and Jared's party strikes out across country, following a trail that only Jeff can see. 

"Do you have _any_ idea where we're going?" Misha asks after a few hours have passed. They've stopped for a break, and Misha is staring at their map with a frown on his face. It's an old map, but still relevant, apart from the small runes drawn in various places which Misha has never been able to translate. Jared's not even sure where Misha got the map in the first place.

"North-ish?" Jeff hazards. "I don't know, I'm just following the tracks."

"Hmm," Misha says thoughtfully. Jensen goes over to join him, and they both stare at the map for a few minutes.

"What's that?" Jensen asks eventually, pointing to something. "It looks like it's not far ahead of us."

"Not a clue," Misha replies. "Not a village. Some kind of forgotten settlement, maybe? I guess we'll find out soon."

"Forgotten settlement?" Aldis' eyes light up. "You mean, full of forgotten treasure and expensive items, just waiting to be picked up?"

Jeff snorts. "Unlikely. Do you really think there'd be anything of value left less than a day's travel from a town?"

"I guess not," Aldis sighs. He looks so disappointed that Jared has to fight back a laugh; he glances at Jensen, who grins at him. Aldis is nothing if not predictable.

Jensen's still staring at the map, frowning. "Hey, do you realise these are dwarven runes?" he says eventually.

Misha blinks. "Dwarven? Are you sure? I've seen dwarven before, and it doesn't look like that." Jim looks uncharacteristically interested, and he goes over to peer at Misha's map.

"He's right," Jim says. Jensen shoves the map into Misha's hands before going into his pack to get some parchment and a quill. Jared watches, slightly confused, as he and Misha scribble on the parchment, arguing with Jim and pointing at various parts of the map. Eventually Misha nods and beckons Jeff to come over, and Jared and Aldis share puzzled glances while the others talk about things to do with forgotten languages, runes, and other stuff Jared neither knows nor cares about.

"So, uh, what's going on?" Aldis asks eventually. He's sitting on the ground playing with his daggers, and Jared's almost bored enough to join him.

"Not sure," Jensen says, his face alight with excitement, "but there might be some kind of lost dwarven artefact not far away."

"Lost dwarven artefact?" Aldis repeats. "What the hell are we waiting for, then? Let's go get it!" He stands up, shoving the daggers back into his belt, and Jared tries not to laugh at his eagerness.

"Dwarven artefacts are _not_ for selling," Jim grunts, but Aldis doesn't seem to hear him.

Jensen rolls his eyes. "Might, Aldis. I said _might_. These runes are very old and we might be interpreting them wrong." He looks at Misha. "Where the hell did you guys get this map, anyway?"

"Found it," Aldis says, which Jared mentally interprets as 'stole it'. "We took it to a cartographer who basically told us it was a fairly accurate map with a few weird markings on it, that was all."

"So we didn't see any point in getting another one," Misha says. 

"Oh _man_ , I can't believe we've had a freakin' treasure map and we didn't know!" Aldis has the sort of smile on his face which Jared has learned to associate with the discovery of large amounts of gold and/or treasure.

Jensen looks like he's about to correct Aldis again, but he bites his lip and shakes his head with an indulgent smile.

"Come on," Jeff says impatiently. "Dwarven treasure or no, that girl has still been kidnapped by dog-headed monsters, and so far, the tracks are leading in the same direction as this possible treasure."

It's early evening, the sun close to the horizon, by the time they get to the place on the map which Misha thought might be an abandoned village. Jeff stops suddenly and crouches down, staring at the ground and poking a few leaves and twigs. Jared has no clue how he can make sense out of them, but Jeff's almost never led them wrong.

"Be alert," Jeff says quietly after a few moments, "there are larger tracks as well. This old village might not be unoccupied."

Jared quietly loosens his sword and sees Jim doing the same. They creep over the rise of a hill and crouch down at the top, looking down into the small depression in which they can see a collection of overgrown cottages. The village has obviously been abandoned for quite a number of years.

"Over there," Aldis says quietly, and everyone looks to where he's pointing. Jared sees a hint of movement; something is trying to hide behind one of the houses. It's not doing a very good job of it if Jared can see it—Jared is notoriously bad at being completely blind when it comes to seeing what's coming for them.

"Is that—" Jeff starts.

"It's a giant," Jim says, and Jeff sighs.

"I hate giants!" Aldis hisses.

"Don't we all?" Jensen says, sounding amused.

"It's okay for you," Aldis says, his voice harsh, "you're not three feet tall!"

"There is that," Jensen concedes. He winks at Jared, and Jared grins back at him.

"So what's the plan?" Jared says. 

Jim clears his throat. "We have the advantage. Usually giants like to be on high ground so they can throw rocks. He'll still throw rocks at us from there but he won't be as effective."

Jared listens as Jim outlines a battle plan. He's aware of Jensen crouched next to him, and he smiles at him again when Jensen mutters the strength spell Jared's getting to know quite well and touches Jared's shoulder. He casts a couple more before they head off into battle—the same strength spell on Jim, the sparkly one which gives him armour, and one which he says makes everyone move more quickly. Misha casts one which makes Jared feel a lot better about the world, and he hefts his sword easily, eager to get into battle.

"Remember the plan," Jim says to Jared. Jared nods, and they charge.

 

Jared can never really remember battles once they're over. It's a downside of his rage; once he snaps out of it all he can remember are vague flashes of action and noise. He's glad that Jim's idea of a battle plan for Jared is for him to fly into an incoherent rage and hit whatever they're attacking really, really hard—when Jim had first joined the party he hadn't realised what Jared was like, and kept getting annoyed when Jared ignored his detailed battle plans in favour of frothing at the mouth and blindly attacking.

It had taken a while to take out the giant. Nearly twelve feet tall with a craggy, brutish face and its stocky body clumsily wrapped in stinking hides, it had seen them coming from the moment they crested the hill. Jared was glad Jensen had cast the Haste spell; otherwise, it would have been very hard to dodge the rocks the giant threw at them as they ran down the hill. Once they were there, though, the giant's strength was outweighed by its lack of dexterity; it was huge and clumsy and almost incapable of avoiding the blows Jared and Jim dealt to it.

"That was invigorating," Jared says, panting. He's sitting on the ground cradling his broken arm, waiting for Misha to heal the large head wound Jim sustained.

"You have a strange idea of fun," Jensen says, sitting down next to him. He's barely broken a sweat; while most of the rest of the party had been in the line of fire, Jensen had stood back and fired spells off. Jared's becoming quite a fan of the one which saps the strength of whatever they're fighting. It hadn't been too long before the giant had been barely able to lift his own club, which was quite a relief after Jim had been knocked out. 

"Fun!" Jared exclaims. He goes to wave his arms around to try to further demonstrate how much he enjoyed himself, and belatedly remembers that one is broken. "Ow, " he says plaintively. Jensen laughs, and Jared looks at him sadly, his lower lip stuck out in an exaggerated pout.

"Oh, c'mon," Jensen says, "I was teasing." He looks down at Jared's arm, which is bent in a rather unnatural way. "Is your arm going to be okay?"

"Sure," Jared says. "It's uh. Kinda really painful right now. But I'll be fine." He shifts a little and cringes in pain, looking over at Misha who's staring closely at Jim, no doubt checking that his head is okay.

"Jim's head looks like it's made of solid bone," Jensen notes. "I don't think I've ever seen him without a helmet. Does he even need one?"

"He _is_ pretty much all bone and beard," Jared agrees, and they share a quiet laugh. Misha comes over a few minutes later and Jared winces as his arm is straightened out and healed. 

"You okay?" Misha asks Jensen once he's finished with Jared, and Jensen nods. "Good. We're staying here for the night; no point going any further."

"Let's go set the tents up," Jared says, and Jensen nods. They wander over to get the tents off Bill Two, passing by Aldis, who is rummaging through the giant's pockets.

"Anything?" Jensen asks, and Aldis grunts. "Nothing. Dirt and rocks and I'm pretty sure I pulled a dead mouse out of his bag." Jensen laughs, and Aldis glares at him. "Dead mouse!" he says dramatically. "It was _rotting_!"

"And that is why it's a bad idea to go through a giant's pockets," Jared says to Jensen as they start pitching the tents.

 

Aldis is on first watch, leaving Jared alone in the tent with Jensen. Jared's almost asleep when he hears Jensen's voice, barely perceptible in the darkness.

"Do you ever get scared?" Jensen asks softly, and Jared rolls over to face him.

"Scared? Of the monsters and stuff? Not really."

Jensen sighs and moves closer. "No, not the monsters. Of—of the evil. There's so much of it around. Those demons, they—they're not even a big part of it, and I can barely stand knowing what they did."

"You've never left Riverton before, have you?" Jared says with a sudden flash of insight, and Jensen shakes his head.

"Never needed to before," he says with a pained laugh. "I was born there. My father—he was a priest of Corellon Larethian. He was on a journey and he stayed for a time in Riverton. He and my mother—" Jensen pauses. "He didn't stay very long. Just a few years. My mother always told me he couldn't bear to, couldn't stand seeing her grow older while he never changed. I don't think he even knows I exist."

Jared lets out a breath. "You've never met him?"

"Never," Jensen says. "My mother had a small painting of him. I don't look much like him. Except, y'know. The ears and eyes." He gestures to his face, to the obvious marks of elvenkind. "I sometimes wish I could get rid of them. A constant reminder that I'm not quite human, not quite an elf."

"But there are heaps of half-elves around," Jared says, frowning. He's sure he's seen quite a few in the places he's been.

"Yeah, but we never fit in," Jensen points out. "I can't live happily in elven society because I'll age so quickly. But to humans, I age really slowly. Hell, we probably look about the same age, but I'm over ninety years old, Jared. Any human friends I make don't last very long. Usually I try not to make them."

Jared frowns. "So... how long do half-elves live?"

Jensen stares into his eyes and doesn't flinch when he answers. "I could reach two hundred."

"Wow." Jared can't bear to look into Jensen's eyes anymore; they're deep green, two large pools of emotions that Jared can't interpret. "So. When I'm a decrepit old man, you'll still be middle-aged."

"Sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it does," Jared sighs, staring at the roof of the tent. He can hear Jim snoring from the other tent, and he concentrates on the sound for a moment. He likes Jensen, and he doesn't want Jensen to push him away because Jensen will outlive him. Jared's human; his life is too short in comparison to all the elves, dwarves and halflings around—he wants to live it to the max.

He's almost asleep when he feels Jensen's hand touch his. It's casual enough to be accidental, and Jared smiles and doesn't move away. The feel of Jensen's pinky finger lightly pressing against Jared's is barely perceptible, but Jared can feel it all the way down to his toes.

 

They have a quick breakfast the next morning, and Jeff picks up the trail once again. "We're heading in the same direction as this rune here," Misha says, pointing to the map. "It's possible that they're holed up there. If so, we'll be there by midday."

"This is the place with the dwarven treasure, right?" Aldis says. Jim glares at him—at least, Jared _thinks_ it's a glare. It's hard to tell with all the hair—and grunts. Aldis ignores him, and Misha ignores Aldis.

The countryside is rolling hills, the same that they've been travelling through since before they arrived at Twoforks. Jared doesn't like it—too many possibilities for ambush. The sun is bright and hot, and Jared notices that Jensen's skin has darkened significantly since they left Riverton. His pale skin, constantly exposed to the sunlight, has been burnished to a warm brown. Jared also can't help but notice that Jensen's sporting a new crop of freckles, and the hair on his arms has been bleached a golden blond.

"You okay?" Jensen says, and Jared realises he's been staring.

"Fine," he says, quickly tearing his gaze away.

Misha was right about the creatures' location, and the sun is just reaching its zenith when they crest a hill and look down upon a ruined tower. "You sure this is the same place as the rune on the map?" Jeff asks, and Misha nods. 

"Positive," he says quietly.

"Let's kill two birds with one stone, then," Jeff replies.

They watch the tower for the rest of the day, watching the creatures go in and out. Jared counts at least seven different dog-headed creatures, as well as several with horse heads, oxen heads, and even a couple with sheep heads. There's a small herd of goats outside the walls, and there are always at least two dog-heads keeping an eye on them. There don't seem to be any set patrols, and after a while, Aldis scouts around the perimeter to check out what they are up against.

"Couple of places around the back we could sneak in," Aldis reports back. He glances at Jared and Jim, and frowns. "We'd have to sneak. Can you guys sneak?"

Jim raises a shaggy eyebrow and shifts slightly. His armour goes _clang_ , and Aldis sighs. Jared's not much better off; he's slightly lighter on his feet than Jim, but his armour and weapons still go _clank, clank_ with almost every movement.

"Great," Jeff says with a sigh.

"Jeff," Misha says quietly, "you do realise I can cast a Silence spell, right?"

Jared covers his mouth and tries not to laugh when Jeff smacks his hand across his face in annoyance. "Yes, I do realise that," he grumbles, and Jared can feel Jensen's body shaking in silent laughter next to him.

"Anyway," Aldis continues his report, "there didn't seem to be too many guarding the place, but there might be a whole lot more inside. There are a couple of those big oxen ones wandering around which we might have to be careful of."

"Suggestions?" Jeff says, looking at Jim. Jim clears his throat. "Sneak in at night," he says. "They don't seem to be nocturnal. Misha can cast Silence on us, and then we just have to try to be sneaky."

Jared's not very good at sneaking, but he nods anyway. They head back down the hill and find somewhere not far off the road to hole up for the rest of the day. Jared takes the opportunity for a nap, sprawling out on the grass with the afternoon sun warm on his face. He doesn't think about the forthcoming battle at all, and his mind is clear when he dozes off.

The sun hasn't moved very far when he wakes up to find Jensen sitting next to him. Jensen's got a frown on his face, and Jared sits up. "You okay?" he asks, wiping a thin sheen of sweat off his face. 

"You were snoring," Jensen says. He's not smiling, but his eyes are crinkled up in a way which Jared has learned means he's amused.

"I do that," he replies, and yawns. "How long was I asleep?"

"Not long. We've got a while before heading out."

"Awesome." Jared rummages in his rucksack for his whetstone and starts working the nicks out of the edge of his sword. Jensen just watches him without speaking, and it doesn't take long for Jared to get uncomfortable. "Hey, are you okay?" he asks.

Jensen nods, the corners of his mouth turning up in a slight smile. His eyes are fixed on Jared's arms as he sharpens his sword, and Jared blushes. Jensen smiles wider, and Jared can't help smiling back despite the way Jensen's gaze sliding over his body makes him blush even more. "Are _you_ okay?" Jensen asks, a strange look in his eyes.

"I don't know," Jared replies, shifting his shoulders, "I'm feeling pretty stiff. Any chance of a rub?"

"Wow," Jensen says, fighting back a laugh, "you're really subtle, Jared."

Jared frowns. "What do you mean? You gave me a really good shoulder rub a while back. I was hoping—"

Jensen just laughs and comes to sit behind him. Jared puts his whetstone and sword down and tries not to groan too loudly when Jensen's fingers start digging into his tight shoulder muscles. Even though he has no trouble with carrying all his gear, his shoulders and back do get a bit sore after a while. Jensen seems to know exactly where he's aching, and it's almost agonising to have someone pressing firmly into the knots. His head hangs and he breathes deeply through the pain, only letting out small grunts when Jensen hits a particularly tender spot. It doesn't take long for the pain to ease, and Jared sighs in relief when the sensation becomes more pleasurable.

"You doing okay?" Jensen murmurs in his ear, and Jared nods.

"Feels good," he says under his breath. Jensen doesn't reply, and his hands move up so he's rubbing his hands over Jared's head, fingers tangling in his hair. Jared groans, leaning back, and Jensen shifts forward so his chest is pressed against Jared's back. It's so relaxing that Jared starts to doze off, wrapped up in a haze of warmth and the sensations Jensen's fingers are causing.

When he wakes up again it's getting dark. The sun has slipped behind the hills and the growing shadows cast a chill over the ground. Jared can feel Jensen's heat behind him, and he notices that not only is he leaning against Jensen, but Jensen's arms are wrapped around him and his face is buried in Jared's neck. Jared can feel the soft warmth of his breath tickling his neck, and he smiles.

 

"So," Misha says, materialising beside Jared as they head back toward the tower. He's smirking, and Jared frowns. It's strange to see a look on Misha's face which isn't serene or patient.

"So..." Jared says slowly. 

"So, I couldn't help but notice the way you and Jensen were all snuggled up," Misha replies, elbowing Jared in the ribs.

Jared purses his lips and wrinkles his nose. "What about it? He was giving my neck a rub and I dozed off."

"Right. _Right_. Just a neck rub, hmm?"

Jared looks around to see where Jensen is before leaning in close to Misha. "I think he likes me," he whispers.

"Really?" Misha says. "Wow. You don't say. Jared, I think you're the last one to realise. Except maybe Jim."

"Quiet!" Jeff hisses from up ahead, and Jared's left to fume in silence as they crest the hill and look down on the run-down tower. It looks as though it was once visible for miles around, but all that's left is crumbling stone, rotten mortar, and overgrown outbuildings. The road leading to it is barely visible, broken and ruined from years of disuse. The remains of the tower sit in darkness apart from a few hints of torchlight flickering in some of the gaps.

Aldis leads them around the back of the tower, where an entire section of the wall has decayed into moss-covered stones lying in heaps on the ground. There's a small stream running past it with a narrow plank lying across it. The timbers are cracked and rotten, and Jared eyes it warily, not entirely certain it's going to hold his weight.

"Time for that spell, Misha," Jeff murmurs, and Misha nods. There's no sign of the creatures on this side of the tower, but they crouch down behind a small rise so the inevitable lights that the spell produces aren't visible to whatever might be watching. 

"Remember, while the spell's up, they won't be able to hear us, but we also won't be able to hear each other," Misha reminds them. "Hand signals only, okay?"

"Will I be able to cast spells?" Jensen asks.

"Only ones you don't need to say aloud," Misha replies. "But the Silence won't last very long, just enough to get us inside without our noisy fighters giving us away." He glances at Jared and winks.

"Armour clanks," Jim rumbles. "Can't be helped."

Misha just rolls his eyes and casts the spell. It's an odd sensation; Jared tries to speak, but although he can feel the vibrations of the words in his throat, no sound comes out at all. Jeff motions them forward, and they head towards the broken-down wall in absolute silence.

It's a good thing they've got the spell active, because when Jared sets foot on the rickety excuse for a bridge crossing the stream, it promptly cracks under his weight and before he knows it, he's sitting in the water. He sighs and picks himself up, wading through the water and climbing the bank. Jensen's doubled over laughing, and he's not the only one; Jeff, Misha and Aldis are all visibly amused, and Jared glares at them all, deliberately shaking water at them. 

Fortunately, Jared was the last one to cross, and before long they're inside the walls, crouched down behind the ruined stone. They haven't seen any sign of the enemy, and after a moment, they start picking their way through the ruined courtyard towards the main building. 

By the time they get there, the Silence spell has worn off. Aldis leans in to listen at the main door, but doesn't have a chance to warn them when it bursts open, revealing four ox-headed creatures on the other side. They're all bigger than Jared, dressed in ragged scraps of leather and chainmail and brandishing huge axes. Aldis narrowly avoids having his head split open by one by somersaulting out the way, and Jared takes a deep breath and draws his sword.

The oxen are tough, much tougher than the dogs had been. It takes several mighty blows with Jared's sword to bring one down, and another three promptly take its place. Jim's hacking away on his other side, and Aldis is a blur of movement, stabbing his rapier in as he dances around the monsters' blows. Jared can't see where Jeff, Misha and Jensen are, but the _zing_ of arrows and the occasional blast of magic tells him that they're all doing their part.

"Tough beasties," Jim yells over the clanging and grunting, and Jared has to agree.

"Heads up," he hears from behind him, and he barely has time to duck out of the way before a large, wailing ball of flame lands behind the creatures. There are screams, groans, and Jared smells the unpleasant stench of cooking flesh and burning hair. Once the spots have cleared from his eyes and he can see again, he realises that the battle is over. He looks over at Jim, who's patting small fires out of his beard, and grins.

"Nice eyebrows," Aldis says, and Jared raises a hand to his face. He groan when he realises that his eyebrows are singed.

"Thanks," he says sarcastically to Jensen, who grins back. "No problem," he replies.

"Everyone okay?" Misha asks, and Jared does his usual post-battle check to ensure he hasn't sustained any wounds without realising it. He seems okay this time, apart from some light burns, and it doesn't take long for Misha to heal him and Jim and for them to be on their way again.

Although the tower appears derelict and barely standing from the outside, inside the walls are still solid. It's dank and dark, with water leaking from the moss-covered stones and making the floor slippery. There's a dreadful stench in the corridors; decay and excrement and animal, and as they carefully pick their way through the dimly-lit stone passageways, they frequently come across the mouldering bodies of small animals. 

"This is gross," Jensen says under his breath, and Jared glances at him, nodding in agreement. 

"Quiet," Jeff murmurs, and they don't speak further. They stop every ten yards or so for Aldis to listen for any noise, and Jared's starting to think that the oxen were the only guards in the entire tower when Aldis frantically waves at them and points at a door on the left side of the corridor. Jared quietly draws his sword, and upon Aldis' nod, he kicks the door open.

There aren't any animal-headed monsters in the room; instead, there are several giant spiders.  
"Oh, _great_ ," Jared mutters, and is able to get in a couple of good hits with his sword before he has to jump aside to avoid a jet of web one of the spiders shoots at him. He dimly hears Jensen's voice chanting a Haste spell, and things suddenly become a lot easier. There are three spiders, each of them many times bigger than Jared, sitting fat and hairy in their webs. Their eyes have a deep, malevolent glow in the dim light of the room, and they hiss and spit at the intruders. Jared takes a deep breath and channels his anger, letting out what he likes to consider a blood-curdling yell as he starts to lay into them. He can sense Jim not far away, methodically chopping limbs off with his waraxe, and the occasional flash of light and shriek of pain from the spiders tells him that Jensen's tossing some fairly damaging spells at them.

The ground is uneven and covered in rubble—and worse—and Jared lurches to one side when his foot slips on something. He manages to regain his balance quickly, but not before one of the spiders gets past his defences. There's a stab of pain in his side, and he bites his lip, forcing it to the back of his mind and unleashing a flurry of blows on the spider. His frenzied attack works; the spider chitters and shrieks when Jared's sword splits its head open. Jared doesn't have time to stop and admire his handiwork; there are two spiders still alive, and he suddenly realises that he's been poisoned. He can feel the strength leeching from his body, and a wave of dizziness passes over him, knocking him out of his frenzy.

"Oh, shit," he mumbles, trying to fight through it but barely able to lift his sword over his head. 

"Get out of the way!" he hears from behind him, and he moves back as quickly as he can just in time to see Jensen cast a spell which sends a wave of ice spewing forth from his fingers. It spreads out in a cone shape, engulfing the remaining spiders, and they both die instantly.

"Wow," Jared says, putting his sword down before he drops it. Even the weight of his armour is suddenly too much, and he sits down heavily for a moment before just giving up and lying down. He thinks he'd like to just spend the rest of his life not moving. "Some spell."

"Cone of Cold," Jensen says smugly, then frowns when he sees how bad Jared is. "Hey, what happened?"

"Poison," Misha says, kneeling next to Jared. "Sapped his strength. I can't heal all this in one go." He passes a hand over Jared, and Jared sighs, feeling a small measure of his strength returning. He's still barely able to lift his sword, though, and Misha frowns. "We're going to have to rest for the remainder of the night," he tells Jeff. "Unless you want to go into battle with a barbarian who can't lift his own weapon."

"I'm okay," Jared protests, but the lie is revealed when he sits up and nearly passes out. "Damn, this armour is heavy," he wheezes, lying back down.

Jeff sighs. "Jim, Aldis, go check how secure this room is." He looks down at a desiccated corpse on the floor. It has the head of a dog, and Jeff nudges it with his toe. "It looks like these spiders didn't get along with the demons. Hopefully the demons avoid this place." Aldis and Jim nod and leave the room.

Jared struggles to move. He's not very comfortable—he's pretty sure that whatever is poking him in the back is much worse than just a rock—but his lack of strength stops him doing anything more than shift uselessly.

"Here," Jensen says, kneeling beside him and starting to work on the buckles of his armour. His fingers are nimble, and it only takes a few minutes for him to pry Jared out of his breastplate. Jared sighs in relief and sits up slowly. 

"Thanks," he says quietly, and Jensen gives him a fleeting smile before helping him to his feet. Misha and Jeff are clearing a corner of the room to set up sleeping rolls, and Jared collapses gratefully onto one. "Wake me when it's my turn for watch," he mumbles, and promptly falls asleep.

 

Jared wakes an unknown amount of time later to the sound of Misha's voice casting a spell. He still feels incredibly weak, but he can feel the power of Misha's God rejuvenating him, giving him his strength back. 

"How are you feeling now?" Misha asks when Jared opens his eyes and sits up. Jared purses his lips thoughtfully and stands up with no trouble whatsoever. He hefts his sword with as much ease as he usually would, and grins.

"Back to normal, I think," he says, and Misha smiles back.

"Good," he replies. "Hopefully we won't need too many advanced spells from me today; I just used most of them getting you back to full strength."

"Is it time to leave already?" Jared says, looking around. Jensen's reading from his spell book the way he always does first thing in the morning, and Jared frowns. "I guess no one woke me up to take watch," he sighs.

"Of course not," Misha replies, rolling his eyes. "You could barely stand. We weren't about to put you on watch while you were in that state. Besides, you needed a full night of sleep to let the poison wear off."

Jared concedes that Misha is right, and he does feel a _lot_ better this morning. There's still some lingering weakness remaining, but it's unlikely to hinder him. He gets to work buckling his armour on, and by the time he's dug through his pack to find something to eat, Jeff and Aldis are back from scouting the area and everyone's ready to go.

"Try to be a little quiet," Jeff says, eyeing Jim and Jared. "It's daytime, so we're likely to stumble into a lot more danger."

"It's like he thinks I wear armour just to annoy him," Jared hisses to Jensen as they leave. "Just 'cause he can swan around in stuff that doesn't clink!"

"Shh," Jensen hushes him, but he's grinning. Jared nudges him in the side with his elbow and Jensen pokes him back, grunting in pain when his finger encounters solid armour with a dull _clank_. Jeff whips around and glares at them, and Jared and Jensen are convulsed in silent giggles for a few minutes.

It's easier to find their way round during the day, but Jeff was right when he said they might encounter a lot more resistance. Three times they're attacked by dog-headed creatures, but they easily dispatch them, and little by little they work their way towards the centre of the keep.

 

They break for lunch in an area which, according to Jeff, bears no signs of recent occupation by the demons, and Jared gratefully flops down on the ground. He's more tired than he should be, which he supposes is understandable, and he spends a few blissful minutes shoving food into his mouth to replenish his strength.

"Hey, are you—" Jensen starts, sitting next to him, but Jared holds up a hand.

"Can't talk, eating," he says through a mouthful of bread. He takes a gulp of water to wash it down before grabbing a hunk of cheese and some dried meat. Jensen stares at him with wide eyes for a moment before turning away and going to examine the walls. All Jensen seems to need is a bit of bread and he's good for the day; Jared would be envious at how easy it is for him to get full, but Jared really enjoys eating so it's really more pity than anything.

"Hey, Aldis," Jensen says, "come and take a look at this." Jared watches with mild curiosity as Aldis and Jensen examine a section of the wall. There's a short, murmured discussion, and then Aldis leans down and pulls out a loose stone from the wall. He reaches behind it and pulls something, and there's a grinding noise, a scraping of stone as part of the wall opens up to reveal a dark passageway.

"Whoa!" Jared leaps to his feet, his meal forgotten, and rushes over to peer through the hole. "How did you know that was there?" he asks Jensen.

"Because unlike you, Jared," Jensen says with a grin, "I can see further than my own two feet."

Jared ignores the insult to his eyesight. It's mostly true, after all. "Should we check it out?"

"Not yet," Jeff advises. "We've got a job to do here. These demons haven't been this way for a long time, and it looks like that door hasn't been opened for just as long." He looks at Aldis, who nods to confirm this. "We'll see what we can do about disposing of these demons and rescuing Lucy, and then we'll come back here. Okay?"

"Fine," Jared says, sighing. He's totally not moping. Really, he isn't. He sits down to finish his lunch and watches as Jim wanders over to the hole and examines it.

"This stonework is dwarven," he eventually states.

"Dwarven treasure!" Aldis yelps. "It must be down there!"

"And it's not going anywhere," Jeff reminds him. "Priorities, people! Aldis, can you get that door shut again?"

Aldis grumbles and fiddles around with the door opening mechanism for a moment, and the door slides shut again with a groan. It's nearly invisible to the naked eye—now that Jared knows it's there, he can see the faint outline of the shape, but if he didn't know, there would be no way of him having even an inkling of its presence.

"Come on," Jeff says putting away his waterskin. "Enough rest. We've got bad guys to kill and a girl to rescue."

Jared's back on board with leaving the mysterious dwarven tunnel for later. There's rescuing to be done.

 

The tower seems to be set out in an odd spiralling pattern which screws with Jared's sense of direction. Jeff seems similarly affected, and it's not long before they start finding themselves in rooms they've visited, coming across bodies of creatures they killed not too long ago.

"Jeff!" Jared groans, frustrated.

"I know, I know," Jeff grumbles. He closes his eyes and turns around in circles, muttering to himself and pointing in seemingly random directions. After a minute or so he nods decisively and leads them in a direction which seems to be heading back where they came from. 

"Are you sure?" Jensen asks, but Jared realises they're now in new passageways. He wonders what kind of crazy mind made this place, because it probably wasn't human.

"No idea," Jeff says when Jared asks. "Yeah, not human. Jim? Is this entire place dwarven?"

Jim shakes his head. "A few bits of stonework, but no more. Besides, dwarves don't build much above ground. I'd say it's more elven than anything."

Everyone looks at Jensen, who shrugs. "Don't look at me. I've never left Riverton before. I don't think I could tell the difference between human, dwarf and elf architecture if you paid me."

"Could be elven," Aldis says thoughtfully. "Some of the stonework has a certain grace to it that you don't see in dwarven work, and humans can't work stone in a pretty way to save their lives."

"Hey!" Misha protests. "I'll have you know that there are some Temples of Pelor which would _blow your mind_."

"They were probably built by elves," Jensen murmurs to Jared, who grins briefly before Misha turns around to glare at them.

 

Eventually they make it to a flight of stairs leading upwards. They had encountered quite a few creatures—mostly dog-headed and a couple of horse-headed ones—but when Aldis quickly peers up the stairs, he pulls back instantly.

"Oxen," he says quietly. "Two of them right at the top of the stairs."

"Does anyone have any spells that'll lure them down here?" Jeff asks. "We don't want to give them any more height advantage than they already have."

"I've got something," Jensen replies. He mutters a few words; there's a shimmer in the air next to him, and an image of Jensen appears right there. The illusion steps out into full view of the oxen, and it's only a moment before a roar from the top of the stairs tells them that it has been spotted. It turns and runs, leading the oxen away, and as they pass where Jared and his friends are hiding, they fall on the oxen from behind.

It's a short, quick battle. The oxen may have human bodies, but they seem to have the brains of oxen, and they weren't expecting to be attacked from the rear. 

"You think that's where we need to go?" Jensen asks. He looks tired; Jared guesses that he's not used to fighting all day.

"I'd say so," Jeff replies. "Everyone good to go?"

Everyone nods, and they head up the stairs. As they get higher, their nostrils are assailed with an even worse stench than ever: these aren't animal smells, they're _human_ smells. Jared can practically taste the fear on his tongue, and he wonders how many humans these creatures have stolen over the past few months. At the top of the stairs is an empty corridor with doors on either side. There's a faint clanging noise coming from the door at the end, a rhythmic sound as though someone is pounding something on a forge. 

"Quietly," Jeff murmurs, and everyone nods. The oxen were guarding something—or someone—and it would be better to take whatever it is by surprise. 

The first door reveals an empty room, with nothing but soiled scraps of cloth and tattered bedding. It looks like it was sleeping quarters of some kind, and they move on. Aldis listens at the next door and signals that there's someone in there, and they all ready weapons before opening the door.

There _is_ someone in there, but it's not one of the creatures. A young woman is curled up in a ball on a pile of filthy straw. She's naked, covered in dirt, and chained to the wall by an ankle. When the door opens, she cringes back against the wall, whimpering and crying quietly.

"Misha," Jeff says quietly, and Misha rushes forwards to check her. She backs away from him, trying to push him away, and he mutters a calming spell. She collapses against him, and he quickly whips his cloak off to cover her.

"Over there," Jared says to Jeff, pointing at the opposite wall. It looks like this girl wasn't alone in here at first; there's the body of another woman lying in another pile of straw. Her limbs are sprawled unnaturally, and Jared feels the bile rise in his throat when he sees that her belly has been ripped open.

"What's going on here?" Jeff demands. The girl mutters something in Misha's ear, her body trembling as she sobs. Misha turns pale, and he looks sick when he turns to Jeff.

"You should look in the next room," he says, his voice tight. Jeff nods and signals for Jim to come with him. They're only gone for a short time, and when they return, Jeff's face is white with anger.

"What is it?" Jared demands.

"Is she okay?" Jeff asks, ignoring Jared. "Has she—did they—"

"No," Misha says. "They haven't done anything to her except push her around a bit. Physically, she's okay."

"Will she be okay while we take care of the other problem?" Jeff asks, and Misha nods. "You might want to stay here," Jeff adds when Misha gets up to join them. He nods and doesn't argue.

"I take it that whatever is in the next room is bad?" Jared says, and Jeff nods.

"This isn't going to be pleasant," he says. "Come on."

The next room is larger, airier. Even from the outside Jared can hear the small cries of whatever is inside there, and his stomach clenches when Jeff opens the door to reveal what is inside.

There are nearly a dozen of them; small creatures with the bodies of human babies and the heads of animals. They're sitting in piles of straw, and when everyone enters, the little creatures look up at them in fear. Some of them whimper and cringe away.

"Oh, no," Jensen breathes. "What do we do?"

"Kill them," Jim says bluntly. "They'll grow up to be those monsters."

"But—" Jared starts. He feels helpless—they're just children.

"They're monsters," Jeff says, sounding unhappy. "They were born of human women who were kidnapped and abused by these monsters. They will grow up to be monsters, visiting hell on these people. We don't have a choice."

"How are we—" Jensen starts, but they're interrupted by a roar from the end of the corridor. They all turn around to see a huge creature standing in the doorway at the end—it's even bigger than the oxen, and has the head of a bear.

"Don't you take another step!" it bellows, brandishing a long iron poker in one hand. It's glowing red, a dense, oily-looking smoke is rolling off the end of it.

"Here we go," Jensen mutters, and starts chanting a spell. The creature roars again, and Jeff, quick as a flash, grabs one of the smallest dog-headed youngsters and holds a knife to its throat.

"Don't move," Jeff cautions, and the bear pauses, concern on its brutish face.

"What now?" Jared murmurs.

"We hold him off for a moment," Jeff says quietly back. Jensen finishes casting his spells—Jared recognises Haste, Mage Armour, and Bull Strength—and Jeff indicates for him to go and get Misha. The bear doesn't move as Jensen goes into the room where Misha is, its black eyes fixed on the youngster Jeff is holding.

"We're going to have to kill you, you know," Jeff says conversationally. The bear growls at them in response and takes a step forwards, but Jeff pushes the knife closer to the youngster's neck. It squirms in his arms, yelping unhappily, and the bear freezes again. Jensen appears back with Misha in tow, who immediately casts his standard battle spell. Jared's not entirely sure what it is—it just sounds like a lot of praying to him—but he always feels just that little bit faster and happier about things when it's been cast. He hefts his greatsword thoughtfully; he feels like he could take this bear all by himself.

"Stand-off," Misha murmurs. "You know we can't let those creatures live. We aren't exactly going to let this bear go free either. You might as well put that one down and we can get started."

The bear reaches over its shoulder and pulls out a giant axe. It's even bigger than Jim's, and it gleams horribly in the patchy sunlight streaming through the open door of the nursery.

"Wow," Jared says. "I really wish I'd charged him before he could do that."

"Don't we all?" Aldis sighs.

The bear growls loudly; it seems to be working itself into a frenzy. Its eyes start glowing red, and foam flecks appear in the corners of its mouth.

"Time to go," Jeff says grimly, and tosses the youngling back into the room. Jared takes a deep breath, taps into his rage, and charges. He can hear Jim not far behind him, can hear the _zip_ of arrows flying past him as Jeff fires his bow. Just before he reaches the creature, which is holding its giant axe in one hand and the poker in the other, a fireball explodes behind it, engulfing it in a ball of flame. Jared feels the familiar singe and stink of burning hair, and the moment the flames die down, he swings his sword.

It's like he just slammed his sword into a stone wall. The creature parries; the jarring pain of the collision with the shaft of its axe shivers through Jared's arm, but it's not enough to shake him from his frenzy. He simply swings again, this time managing to get through the creature's guard, and feels his sword cut into its body. It shrieks and bellows and turns on Jared, its glowing eyes furious and flecks of spittle flying. Jared's in no state to defend himself; he never can when he's in a rage, and he feels sharp stabs of pain as the huge axe bites into him.

A sparkling ray shoots past Jared and strikes the bear square in the chest. It roars and falters, and its next swing misses Jared completely. There's another ray, and the bear groans, dropping its huge axe. It stumbles back and brandishes the poker, but it's no good against a concentrated melee assault by Jim and Jared, especially when Aldis manages to sneak around behind it and stab it in the kidneys with his rapier. Jensen's spells are constant flashes of light striking the bear, and Misha's spiritual mace glows in the air beside the bear, striking it painful blows across the face.

"No!" the bear roars, and hurls his poker with terrifying accuracy straight at Jensen. Jared doesn't see it hit, but he hears Jensen's pained cry, and the magical assault stops.

"Finish him off," Jeff says grimly from behind them. 

"Please," the bear gurgles, and it falls to its knees, bleeding from multiple wounds. Jared doesn't feel any sympathy; he raises his sword high above his head and removes the bear's head from its shoulders.

The red haze fades from his vision, and Jared's abruptly aware of his injuries. "Ow," he says faintly, and drops his sword. He's not going to die anytime soon, but he hopes Misha's got plenty of healing spells up his sleeve. He glances over to see what the cleric is doing, and his stomach gives a sick lurch when he sees Jensen lying on the floor with Misha kneeling over him.

"What happened?" Jared demands, once again forgetting his wounds and rushing over. Jensen's still alive, but his face is pale and his breathing is shallow and fast.

"That poker thing the bear threw at him," Misha murmurs. He rips open the burnt sleeve of Jensen's tunic to reveal a massive wound on his arm. It looks like the poker had almost been forcibly driven into his arm and then torn out, taking flesh with it as it went. It's singed Jensen's arm around the edges of the wound, and there's a stink of cooking meat in the air which makes Jared want to gag.

"But he just _threw_ it at him! At most it would have given him a bump!" Jared objects.

"It was enchanted," Misha says. "Now shut up and let me do this." Jared gets the message and goes to take a look at the body of the bear. 

"Anything useful?" he asks Aldis, who's poking around its body and seeing what it has. He tries to pay attention to this, and not whatever Misha is doing to Jensen. 

"Nice-looking axe," Aldis says, pointing at it. He's right, it _is_ a nice-looking axe.

"It's probably evil," Jared says morosely. "All the nice weapons we get are."

"That's because we kill evil things," Aldis says logically. "Hey, he's got a nice necklace. And those rings will fetch a fair amount." He wrestles the jewellery off the bear's body while Jared examines the armour it's wearing.

"Wow," he says, impressed. "This is mithril, man. Mithril chain."

"Awesome," Aldis says, and grins. "Hey, is Jensen okay?"

Jared looks back to where Jensen is, and frowns. He's still lying down; Misha's healing spells are usually a lot quicker than this, and he goes to see what's going on.

"That sigil is evil," Misha's murmuring to Jeff. " I can't heal it properly; it's tainted."

"What do we do?" Jeff asks.

"Nothing much we _can_ do," Misha replies. "I can heal the wound as best I can, and he'll be fine, physically. But that thing... I can't work out what it is. I can barely stand to look at it."

"Will he be okay?" Jared demands, kneeling next to Jensen and taking his hand. 

"I think so," Misha says. "I think it might be some kind of tracking device. I'm hoping that it's tied to that bear so he can track any escaping prisoners, and now that he's dead, it's irrelevant."

"Can I have some healing, then?" Jensen asks in a quiet voice. He opens his eyes and glares at Misha. "I'm _bleeding_. And in pain. Healing now, please?"

"Sorry, sorry," Misha says, smiling slightly, and Jared relaxes a little bit too. If Jensen's being snarky, he can't be feeling _too_ bad. Misha casts the healing spell, and Jared watches as the flesh on Jensen's arm knits back together. It's still scarred, though, and there's an angry red burn in the shape of the brand. "That's the best I can do," Misha says, and Jensen nods, sitting up.

"You feeling okay?" Jared asks, and Jensen nods, looking at him with a smile. The smile quickly turns into a frown, though, and he says, "Um, Jared? You're bleeding. Everywhere. A lot."

"Oh," Jared says, looking down at himself and finally remembering that yes, he is quite badly wounded. "Just surface cuts. Nothing too lethal."

"I swear," Misha grumbles, "most of my healing spells go to you, Jared." He's smiling a little, though, and Jared sighs in relief when he feels the familiar sensation of skin and muscle knitting back together.

Once everyone is healed and the body of the bear has been stripped of anything useful, everyone silently looks at the door to the nursery.

"What do we do?" Jensen asks.

Jeff rubs a hand over his face. "Do you have any spells which will put them all to sleep?" he asks, and Jensen nods. "We could—we could do that. Then it would be—it would be quick and easy. No screaming."

"Actually," Jensen says thoughtfully, "I might have something better." He rummages around in his bag until he finds his scroll case, and carefully pulls one out. "This is more advanced than _anything_ I can cast at the moment," he warns. "It might not work."

"What is it?" Misha asks.

Jensen swallows. "Symbol of Death."

" _Symbol of Death_?" Misha exclaims. "You have a scroll of Symbol of Death? How— where—"

"I've had it for ages," Jensen confesses. "I won it in a game of cards back at the guild before I joined you guys. I knew I should probably sell it, but I kept it around in case it came in handy. It's too advanced to put in my spellbook, so I guess I was waiting until I was able to learn it." He looks down at the scroll. "If I use it now, it'll be gone and I'll never get to learn it."

"Probably a good thing," Misha says. "That spell is _nasty_."

"Will it work?" Jeff asks, and Jensen nods.

"It'll be quick and easy once I've cast it," he promises. "If I _can_ cast it, that is. It takes a while."

They go to pick up Lucy and then all wait at the bottom of the stairs while Jensen casts the spell, and when he eventually joins them, his lips are tight and his face is white.

"Did it work?" Jeff asks, and Jensen nods. 

"They're all dead," he says shortly. Jared touches Jensen gently on the shoulder, and he turns into Jared's body, leaning his head on his chest.

"We should go," Misha says. "We have to get this girl back to Twoforks."

 

Everyone in Twoforks is amazed to see them back alive, and even more amazed that they have Lucy with them, alive and not too badly harmed. Sam has tears in her eyes when she thanks them for getting rid of the demons, and Jared feels a small swell of pride.

They stay in Twoforks for two nights, using the day in between to recuperate. Jared's delighted when Misha tells him that the axe the bear was using isn't evil, and when Jensen informs him that it has both a keen edge and a frost spell embedded in it, he almost cries with joy. The mithril chain it was wearing turns out to be magical as well, and everyone agrees that Jared could do with some better armour. He thankfully unbuckles his unwieldy breastplate for the last time and sighs in happiness when he puts the mithril chain on. It's much lighter than his breastplate, and as well as being many times stronger. Not to mention it has a strength spell embedded in it which is going to make it much easier to wield the huge axe.

"Are we going back there?" Aldis demands in the evening. They're in what passes for the tavern, drinking sub-par ale on the house. People keep coming over to thank them and congratulate them, even sometimes trying to offer them something as a reward. They always say no—anything these villagers offer them is much more valuable to the villager than it ever would be to them—but the free ale is nice.

"Of course," Jeff says, raising an eyebrow. "Did you think we'd just walk away from possible dwarven treasure?"

" _Thank_ you!" Aldis sighs, ignoring Jim's irritated _humph_.

Jared ignores them; he's worried about Jensen. The wizard has barely spoken a word since they left the tower, despite Jared's best efforts to engage him in conversation. Even now, he's sipping his ale silently, seemingly ignoring everything that's going on around him. Jared shifts a little closer to him on the bench and, under the table, slides his hand over to where Jensen's is resting on the bench. Jensen barely even blinks when Jared laces their fingers together, but he squeezes Jared's hand tight.

 

They start back towards the tower the next morning. Jared's glad to be back on the road again, especially since it is for reasons a lot more enjoyable than the previous expedition. The warm weather is holding, and they travel with the sun in their faces. At night Jared lies close to Jensen in their tent while Aldis is out on watch, and wonders what to say to him. Jensen doesn't speak much beyond what is necessary, but during the night Jared is woken by him thrashing around in his sleep.

"Hey, Jensen," he says quietly, touching his shoulder. "Wake up, c'mon." Jensen jerks awake with a stifled cry and sits up, blinking at Jared in confusion.

"What's going on?" His face is pale in the darkness, his eyes wide.

"I don't know. Were you having a nightmare?"

"Again," Jensen mumbles, and wipes his face. Jared doesn't need to ask what it was about; ever since Jensen cast the Symbol of Death he's been quiet and sad.

"You wanna talk about it?" Jared asks instead. He's never been very good at offering advice, but he's not too bad at listening.

"Not particularly," Jensen replies. He lies back down, closer to Jared this time, but doesn't closer his eyes. Instead he stares at Jared, his huge eyes glowing very faintly with an elven glimmer. It's disconcerting, but Jared finds himself unable to look away. He's not even slightly surprised when Jensen leans in slowly and kisses him softly on the cheek. "G'night," Jensen says, and turns away. He doesn't move away, though; his back is pressed up against Jared's side, and Jared automatically rolls over to press up against Jensen from behind. He slides an arm under Jensen's blanket and around his waist, and they fall asleep together.

He's woken up later by a light touch on his shoulder. He rolls away from Jensen and sees Aldis grinning at him in the dark.

"My turn?" he asks groggily, and Aldis nods, still grinning. Jared frowns at him and starts putting his armour on. Aldis is starting to make him feel distinctly uncomfortable with his leering.

"Don't get distracted out there," Aldis says as Jared leaves the tent, and Jared manfully resists the urge to say something rude. Although what he'd say, he has no idea—Jared is terrible at snappy comebacks—but he's sure he'll think of something while he's on watch. Then the next time Aldis tries to be funny, Jared will be able come straight back with an appropriate response which will slay him _dead_.

He spends most of his time on watch trying to come up with a good line, but by the time Misha emerges from his tent for his morning prayers, Jared's still clueless. He sighs and stands up, stretching his muscles out before heading to the fire pit to start on breakfast.

Jensen is more cheerful that day, frequently smiling at Jared. They walk close enough together for their hands to brush occasionally, and Jared's unable to keep a grin off his own face. He doesn't even care that Aldis keeps sending them sly glances.


	3. Chapter 3

"Should we take Bill Two with us?" Jared asks when they get to the tower. They'd kept him tied up out of sight the previous time, but Jared's not keen on leaving him tied again—he has no idea how long they're going to be gone.

"Not a bad idea," Jeff concedes. "We have no idea how far that tunnel goes. It could take us half an hour to see what's down there, or we could be down there for days."

They gather materials to make torches, over Jim's protests that he can actually see in the dark. "But we can't," Misha points out. "You can go ahead of us so the torchlight doesn't ruin your dark vision, but we're going to need _something_." Jim grumbles but concedes.

It takes them quite some time to get back to the room with the secret door. Jeff gets himself turned around again, and Aldis comments that they should have made marks on the walls telling them where to go. The room, when they finally get there, is completely unchanged from the last time, and the secret door is just as hidden. Jared can't even see it anymore, but Aldis and Jensen head straight towards it.

They light torches and start down the damp, cracked steps into the darkness.

 

It's quite some time later, and Jared's getting bored. "We've been going down these stairs for _ages_ ," he groans. "My knees hurt!"

"It's going to suck coming back up here," Jensen notes.

"We've gone down over two thousand steps," Aldis says helpfully, and Jared grimaces.

"This is nothing," Jim says from up ahead, just beyond the circle of torchlight. "Just you wait until you go to a real dwarf city... it can take an entire day to get down there."

Jared groans again. "That must be hell getting out of."

"Well, normally we have special mechanical devices rigged up to make the journey quicker," Jim admits. "I don't see any pulleys or anything here, though, so Jensen's right. Coming back up is not going to be fun."

Jared's on the verge of throwing a massive sulk, sitting down on the stairs and refusing to go further, when suddenly the stairs end and they're standing at one end of a long corridor. Bill Two looks relieved, or as relieved as a mule can look, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

"How far underground are we?" Jeff asks. Jim frowns and presses a hand against the wall. "I'd say about a mile," he says eventually. "And we've travelled at least two miles from the tower. In a northerly direction."

"This is definitely dwarven, isn't it?" Misha says as they start along the corridor. It's low-ceilinged, and Jared can feel his hair brushing rough stone as he walks. He stoops slightly, not particularly wanting to bash his head open on a low roof.

"I'd say so," he says, and Jim nods in agreement. "Better put your helmet on," he says to Jared, and Jared grimaces. He hates wearing his helmet and usually goes without unless he's in battle. It obscures his vision, not to mention the way it makes his head sweat awfully. He always ends up with sweat running down his neck and face when he wears it, but he concedes that Jim might have a point, especially when he doesn't notice a particularly low area of roof and walks right into it.

"Ow," he says plaintively, but when he takes his hand away from his head, there's no blood. He gloomily unhooks his helmet from his belt and puts it on.

"Serves you right for being so tall," Jensen says, and Jared pokes his tongue out at him. Jared's not _that_ tall. Okay, he _is_ , but his brother was even taller. Seven feet is nothing in his family. 

"You're just jealous because you're so short in comparison," he shoots back, but instead of understanding the comment as the clever comeback that it is, Jensen just laughs. Jared honestly doesn't care, because it's nice to hear Jensen laugh again.

They walk for miles underground. It's cold and damp, a bone-deep chill that seeps from the walls, and Jared finds himself drenched in a cold sweat from his armour. It's not as bad as it would be if he was still wearing his old breastplate, but he's starting to become distinctly uncomfortable.

"Anyone know what time it is?" he says in the dark silence. No one's said anything for the past few miles; Jared's pretty sure he's not the only one with a growing sense of dread. 

"After dinnertime, that much I know," Aldis says in a grumpy tone.

"Let's press on," Jeff suggests. "If we don't find an end to this corridor soon we'll stop for the night."

 

It isn't long before Jim stops abruptly. "There's a large space up ahead," he says. "I'll go take a look; stay here." Jeff nods, and Jim vanishes into the darkness. When he returns a few moments later, he motions them forwards. "Huge cavern," he says. "Like a dwarven hall of some kind." 

It'll make a nice change from the endless corridor, and Jared happily forges ahead into the wide open space. It's a relief to be able to breathe properly; the corridor had been quite claustrophobic, and Jared's back had been starting to ache from stooping slightly. He stands up straight and yanks his helmet off, ruffling his sweat-damp hair and feeling the chill air settle on his scalp. He fights down a terrible urge to yell into the darkness to hear the echo—there are likely all manner of nasty beasts lurking in the corners, and Jared doesn't particularly want to wake them up any sooner than he has to.

The dim torchlight reveals huge columns and a ceiling so high it's barely visible. The columns are square and blocky, but have a vast, solid elegance about them which reminds Jared of dwarven buildings. They're definitely in an old, abandoned dwarven settlement, and Jared wonders what form of treasure could be concealed here.

"Any chance of finding someplace secure for the night?" Jensen asks, fighting back a yawn. Jared agrees with him; it's been a long day, and even though there's no concept of time in these tunnels, he definitely could do with something to eat and a good night's sleep.

"Should be small rooms along the side of the hall," Jim says, and he's right. The first door they come to is rotting off its hinges, and the room behind it is in even worse condition. It's defensible, though; there's plenty of material lying around to block up the low, narrow doorway. Besides which, Jeff assures them that nothing has been this way for many years.

Jared's a bit paranoid about the light they're creating, though, so he works extra hard on blocking the door before he shrugs his armour off and sits down to have something to eat. Jensen groans as he flops down next to him, and leans his head on Jared's shoulder.

"Tired?" Jared asks, and Jensen grunts. "Stupid question, I guess," Jared concedes. Jensen nods and shifts until he's more comfortable. Jared's suddenly aware of everyone staring at him and Jensen, and he glares back, daring them to say a word.

It's a vaguely confusing time for Jared. He understands, technically, what relationships are about. He knows how sex works. He's just never actually experienced an affection for someone deep enough to consider sex with them. Jensen makes him consider it; makes him wonder if this is what it feels like to love someone. He wonders whether he should talk to Jensen about what's going on, but decides that he's probably better off just taking things as they come. Jared's not too good at talking things out; he tends to shove both feet in his mouth and usually ends up wishing he'd never said anything.

Jared's on first watch that night, and he stands by the makeshift door and stares out the small gaps into the complete blackness on the other side. Nothing happens, and he's relieved to be able to go and wake Jeff for his turn before looking around for a place to sleep. Jensen's curled up on the far side of the glowing coals of the fire, and Jared doesn't even think about it before he slides under Jensen's blankets and wraps an arm around him from behind.

"You smell like rust," Jensen mumbles sleepily, but he shifts closer to Jared anyway until their bodies are completely pressed together from chest to toe.

"Do not," Jared counters, and kisses the back of Jensen's neck. Jensen makes a pleased sound and shifts a little, which brings his ass into direct contact with Jared's crotch. Jared's breath catches in his throat a little, and he can't resist kissing Jensen's neck again, open-mouthed and heated, tasting Jensen's skin and enjoying the way it makes Jensen squirm in his grasp. Jared slides his hand up Jensen's shirt and presses it flat against his stomach. Jensen feels _good_.

"Not here," Jensen murmurs quietly, wrapping a hand over Jared's and preventing it from moving. Jared's momentarily stung, but then realises Jensen had simply objected to the location, not the act. The more he thinks about it, the more he realises that Jensen is right and that this is not a good place to try to start something. He places one last kiss on Jensen's neck, nuzzles the short hairs at his nape, and falls asleep.

 

"Okay, seriously," Aldis says, "we've been looking around _all day_ and there isn't any treasure _anywhere_."

"You're too impatient," Jim says, but Jared has to agree with Aldis. After the first flash of excitement at discovering a huge, forgotten dwarven hall, it's become boring. It's cold down here, and damp, and they haven't found anything interesting.

"I beg to differ," Jensen says, when Jared complains to him. He's staring at a seemingly blank wall, and Jared frowns at it, trying to see what's so interesting. Jensen doesn't respond to his query, just goes over to the wall and starts pressing various parts of it. Jared's frown clears up when there's a scraping noise and part of the wall shifts away.

"Another secret door?" Aldis asks disbelievingly. "How did I miss that?"

"You didn't look hard enough," Jensen says, already halfway through the door. It's very low; Jared's going to have to bend almost double to get through, and he hopes like mad that it's not another endless corridor like the one they came down yesterday. Fortunately, once they're through the opening, he's able to stand up straight without banging his head. They're in a rough-hewn tunnel, which looks like it was carved from the stone with the clumsiest of tools. Jim looks around and grunts in disapproval.

"Goblins," he says, and spits. 

"Awesome," Jared says to himself. He enjoys fighting goblins.

"Another endless passageway?" Aldis groans.

"You could ride Bill Two if you want," Jared offers.

"Really?"

"No, of course not," Jared says with a sigh. "I was teasing. Bill Two's already carrying all our gear." No one ever gets Jared's jokes.

"That wasn't funny," Aldis snaps.

"Come on," Jeff says wearily. "Let's see where this goes."

 

The passage leads sharply downhill, and thankfully, it's nowhere near as long as the previous one. It's not long before they spot flickering torchlight up ahead and start to hear voices. Jared listens closely but it's not a language he can understand. It's harsh and guttural, and Jim hisses softly.

"Goblins?" Jeff asks. Jim nods, then frowns for a moment and adds, "Not just goblins. Kobolds and orcs too."

"Ugh, not _kobolds_ ," Jared groans. Goblins are somewhat enjoyable to get rid of, but kobolds are just annoying. It's like killing rats. They're small and noisy and are annoyingly unafraid of anything, even giant barbarians four times their height and wielding axes bigger than them.

"Come on!" Jim barks, already racing ahead with his axe drawn. Jared groans and follows; of course Jim is dying to get into it with the goblins and kobolds—he's a dwarf. The enmity between dwarves and goblins is legendary.

They round the corner and find a small group of creatures—a couple of goblins, some kobolds, and an orc. They look completely surprised to see Jim and Jared, but recover quickly, and the battle is joined.

 

Thanks to Jim, the battle is over as quickly as it started. He'd been in an absolute rage—not a fiery, burning rage like Jared, but a cold, calculating one. The goblins and kobolds had fallen to his axe with very little resistance, while Jared took care of the orc. It had just been a young orc, not very experienced, and its eyes had been full of terror as it tried to avoid Jared's blows. Everything was dead by the time the rest of the party arrived, and Jeff proceeded to lose it at Jim.

Jared starts going through the pockets of the fallen creatures while he half-listens to Jeff berating Jim for going off like that. He's pretty sure Jeff's just pissed that he didn't get to kill any goblins.

"Have we just broken into some kind of goblin colony?" Jensen asks once Jeff's done. "Because if we have, we probably don't want to just charge on ahead. I don't like our chances."

"He's right," Aldis says. "Treasure's one thing, but taking on an entire goblin city? Not my idea of a good time." He gets the map out of his bag and peers at it. "Does anyone have any idea whereabouts we are? Any idea at all?"

"Give me that," Jim grunts, and squints at the map. "We're here," he says, pointing at a spot right on the foothills of the mountain ranges in the north. It's not too far from the tower where they started, and Jared sees that there's another one of those strange dwarven runes right next to where Jim's pointing.

"So... are we going back?" Jared asks. Jeff looks like he's about to say yes, when Jim interrupts.

"No," he says bluntly. "We have to keep going."

"Why?"

"There's something down here," Jim mutters. "Don't ask me what, because I don't know. But there's something down here we have to find."

"Well, that's helpful," Misha says, uncharacteristically sarcastic. Jared glances at him and sees that his customary deep tan has faded alarmingly.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asks, and Misha shakes his head.

"I've been better. I don't cope that well out of the sun. Pelor's the Sun God, remember? It's hard to say dawn prayers as effectively when I can't actually see the rising sun."

"Whatever we need to find, it's not far," Jim says firmly. 

Everyone looks at Jeff, who sighs. "Fine!" he says eventually. "We'll keep going. Jim, I hope to Ehlonna that there's somewhere else we can get to the surface and that we don't have to go back the way we came."

"Your woodland goddess won't do much good here," Misha mutters, and Jeff glares at him

"Please let's not argue about religion," Jensen sighs. "That argument never gets resolved."

"I agree," Jared says. "Can we go now? These goblins have shit all treasure."

"This way," Jim says with scary precision, and they start along one of the passageways leading off the room. They're no longer in rough-hewn stone corridors; the walls are much smoother and more finished. There are even occasional torches in sconces on the wall to light the way.

"We're going to die!" Aldis hisses. They're moving as quietly as possible—Jared's extremely happy with his new armour, which doesn't clank anywhere near as loudly as his breastplate did, but Jim's still pretty noisy—and every door they pass and open is a tense moment. They easily take care of any goblins and kobolds they find, but Jared's getting more and more stressed the further away they get from the exit.

"Let's stop for a while," Jeff says after they've cleared out the next room. Everyone sits down with relief, and Jeff turns to Jim. "Okay, seriously. What's going on? Because if we're traipsing through a huge kobold city just so you can kill kobolds, that's not gonna—"

"It's one of my Gods," Jim interrupts, and everyone stares at him.

"Wait," Misha says, frowning. "A—a _God_? How do you know?"

"I just know," Jim says angrily. "Come with me, go back, it's up to you—but I am not leaving until I find out what's down here."

"Which God?" Misha asks, but Jim refuses to answer.

"Well, uh, I guess we're continuing on," Jeff says in the uncomfortable silence that follows. They eat bread and dried meat in silence, and Jared gives Bill Two some oats and water. Bill Two hasn't been looking very happy since they entered the tunnels, and Jared's starting to wish they'd left him in Twoforks. He probably would have been safer there, even with the locals' fear of animals.

They continue their cautious trek, managing to avoid large groups of goblins and dispose of small groups, and eventually, Jim leads them to an old, disused tunnel leading down. There are runes carved into the stone above the entrance, and Jim squints at them.

"Can any of you read Goblin?" he asks.

"I can," Jensen says, surprising Jared. He peers at the markings and frowns. "It's a warning," he says. "They must be terrified of whatever is down here."

"It's this way," Jim says firmly. There's no arguing with him, and they follow him into the old tunnel. It's completely unlit, and after the first turn, they're forced to light torches again. There's an ancient smell of decay, and the floors are thick with dust which is stirred up by their passage. Jared sneezes, which earns him a frown from Jeff. 

They pause for a moment to get their bearings—the passage has been twisting and turning for quite some time, and Jim estimates that they're not actually too far north of the goblin tunnels, just a lot further underground. Jensen sighs and leans against the wall, but promptly pulls away with a sound of disgust. 

"Spider webs!" he groans, picking thick, sticky strands off his tunic. 

"Oh, great," Aldis groans. "I bet they're huge, as well." Jared doesn't say anything, just looks around carefully at the tunnel walls. They're all thick with webs, and there's the occasional desiccated bundle to indicate some unfortunate lifeform that once tried to pass this way. Jared's a bit nervous when they continue on and he starts seeing dead orcs. Those things are pretty big, and he doesn't want to meet the spider which is big enough to easily take out an orc or two without trying. He says as much to Jensen, who glares at him.

"Well, now we're _definitely_ going to meet some," he grumbles, but Jared doesn't follow his logic. Jensen's proven right, however, when Jeff, who had been scouting ahead, rushes back and yells, "Incoming!" before turning around and shooting off a few arrows at whatever is following him.

"Awesome," Jared mutters, and unslings his axe.

 

Three gargantuan spiders later, Jared lies on the floor of the tunnel and wonders whether he'll ever be able to move again. Misha had been able to remove the poison pretty easily this time, but now he's grumbling at having to use up most of his healing spells on Jared and Jim.

"Not my fault," Jared says petulantly. "I'm a barbarian. We're _supposed_ to rush into battle without thinking."

"Just because it's traditional doesn't make it right," Misha sighs, healing the last of Jared's wounds and moving onto Jim. No one's escaped unscathed—Aldis is sporting a nasty burn where one of the spiders had spat acid at him, and Jeff's patiently waiting for Misha to take care of the gash on his leg from where the spider had caught up to him. Even Jensen has a scraped face where one of the spiders had managed to get a lucky blow before he could get away.

"Rest time?" Jared asks plaintively, but Jeff shakes his head. "We keep going. This is not a good place to stop." Jared groans and pulls himself up off the ground. Jensen's there to help him, a gentle hand in the small of his back to provide support, and Jared smiles at him. It's been too stressful a day to talk, and Jared's quite looking forward to sleeping wrapped around Jensen again.

Thankfully, the spider webs don't last much longer. There are other tunnels, also thick with webs, but Jim leads them down each fork in the passage with certainty, and Jared heaves a sigh of relief when the webs peter out. The corridors are taking on a much more sculpted look, but it doesn't bear much resemblance to the goblin passages.

"Dwarven?" Aldis guesses, and Jim nods. "I don't understand," he says quietly. "We're hundreds of miles from the nearest dwarven settlements. But this—" he runs his hands over the stonework, "—this looks like temple architecture. But why would there be a temple so far from dwarven lands?"

"Let's find out," Jeff says.

 

Jared's puzzled by the change in Jim. In the past day, he's spoken more words than he usually does in a month. Jared guesses that it has something to do with his Gods, even though Jim has never struck Jared as a particularly religious figure.

"Dwarves are _very_ religious," Misha tells him in a hushed voice when Jared asks him about it. "They just don't show it. But consider—if you lived underground, where you're constantly in danger of rock falls, fire, goblin incursions, you'd be religious too. We're underground, where Jim belongs, and this is more his true self than you'll ever see above ground."

 

They come to a large room with a ceiling so high the light of the torches doesn't reach it. There are niches in the walls, all even distances apart, and each one contains a sarcophagus. There's a sudden commotion, and Jared turns to see that Bill Two is panicking, hooves scrabbling at the ground as he tries to turn back the way they came. 

"Shh," Jeff says, and everyone falls quiet. All they can hear is the mule, but suddenly Jared picks up the sound. It's a faint wail, right on the edge of hearing, and Jim hisses, "Spectres!"

There are four of them, floating out of the darkness towards them. As they get closer, Jared can see that they're orcs, each of them showing evidence of the terrible wounds they died from. He hefts his axe, but before he can attack, Misha steps forward and thrusts his hand out. He chants a prayer and his hand lights up, but the spectres don't crumple into dust like Jared was expecting. They do look scared, though, and one flees, vanishing through the wall with a thin cry of pain.

"Damn," Misha says, to everyone's surprise. Misha _never_ curses. "Sorry," he says, "that didn't work as well as I'd hoped."

"Oh well," Jeff says, and fires an arrow at one of the spectres. It flies straight through, but the spectre doesn't look too happy about it.

"This one might be better," Misha says, and a beam of light erupts from his hand, a glowing, burning ray which pierces a spectre and makes it wail and crumple. It's not quite finished off, but Jared swings his axe at it and it dissolves into nothing.

"That worked," Jared says. He's a little reluctant to tap into his rage for this battle—undead monstrosities are notoriously good at draining life with a simple touch, but the strength he gains from Raging will provide a buffer against it. As the haze descends over his eyes, he dimly hears Misha try the turning spell again.

One of the spectres sinks into the floor and disappears, so Jared concentrates on the one remaining. It snarls at him with a whispered hiss, but Jared ignores it and just keeps on swinging. He feels a chill touch settle over his bones when the spectre manages to touch him, but he shakes it off and continues until it explodes into nothingness like the last one did.

"Ow, _fuck_ ," he hears Jensen groan, and turns to see the last spectre has risen out of the floor behind him and has just laid a hand on Jensen's shoulder. Before his eyes, Jared can see Jensen's life draining away, and he crumples to the floor. Misha looks seriously pissed off now, and he sends another one of his scorching beams of light at the spectre. It groans and disappears, and Jared rushes to Jensen's side.

"He's not injured," Misha says wearily. "He's been drained. I can't heal all this at once." He mutters a prayer, and a warm glow covers Jensen for a moment. Misha looks up at Jeff. "We have to rest now. I've done all I can, but I can't pray anymore until I've rested."

"Fine," Jeff says. "Jared, Aldis, go scout back the way we came and see if you can find somewhere we can hole up and sleep."

Jared nods, and follows Aldis back into the corridor. They find a small room not far away, and surprisingly, the door still works. The wood is solid, and when Jared raps it with his knuckles, it actually hurts. "Wow," he says, rubbing his hand. "Good craftsmanship."

"Yeah, dwarves tend to build stuff that lasts," Aldis says. "Just like elves and halflings. You humans can't build shit."

"Shut up," Jared mutters.

"Speaking of elves," Aldis says in an overly casual voice, "What's up with you and Jensen?"

Jared looks at Aldis, who's trying to hide a smirk. "Why should I tell you? You'll just make fun of me." 

To his credit, Aldis actually looks offended. "Jared, I'm your friend! I'd never make fun of you. Well, okay. I wouldn't make fun of you in a nasty way."

Jared frowns uncomfortably. "I don't know. I like him. He seems to like me."

"Good for you. But if you guys start fucking while I'm in the tent, I _will_ make your lives miserable."

"We're not going to do that!" Jared's horrified at the very thought. "We'd wait until you were out on watch or something. Gross, man."

Aldis looks at him with a hint of suspicion in his dark eyes. "When we get out of here, we're getting another tent."

"Fine by me," Jared shoots back.

"Fine!"

They're still bickering when they get back to the large room, and it doesn't take long for everyone to move to the smaller one. Jensen can't stand without toppling over, and Jared has to carry him. He doesn't mind, although Jensen complains and moans about how he can walk just fine, thank you very much. Jared ignores him and just enjoys the weight of Jensen in his arms, the feel of Jensen's arms around his neck and his face pressed into Jared's shoulder. 

"Giant lump," Jensen grumbles. "Too big. Stupidly big. Damn you." But when Jared looks down, Jensen's smiling a little. Jared smiles back, and Jensen winks at him before gently kissing Jared's neck just above the collar of his tunic. Jared grins harder, and lags behind the others for a brief moment.

"What are you—" Jensen starts, but Jared interrupts him by placing a soft kiss on Jensen's lips. " _Oh_ ," Jensen murmurs, and kisses Jared back. Jared feels a bit ridiculous, carrying Jensen in his arms and kissing him, but he quickly forgets because kissing Jensen is _amazing_. Jared feels clumsy, inexperienced, but Jensen takes control and parts his lips slightly over Jared's, making quiet sounds of pleasure. It's more a sharing of breath and space than anything too involved, and Jared thinks he could fall in love with the feel of Jensen's warm mouth pressed against his own.

Jared's just starting to get really into it and is wondering about maybe opening his mouth a little to taste Jensen's lips when someone clears their throat loudly. He tears himself away from Jensen and looks up, blushing bright red when he sees the entire party standing at the end of the corridor with huge smirks on their faces.

"Shut up," he grunts, and Jensen just laughs when Jared quickly moves past them and into the room.

"I'm glad _someone_ is enjoying this little adventure," Jeff says snidely. Jared ignores him and puts Jensen down so he's propped up against the wall.

"You okay there for a bit?" Jared asks, and Jensen nods, watching with a faint smile as Jared sets up his sleeping mat. He goes to pick Jensen up again, but Jensen holds a hand up. "I can get to the sleeping mat, I think." Jared shrugs and gets his own mat ready while Jensen crawls slowly to his bed. He sighs in relief when he finally gets there, and Jared pulls a blanket over him.

"I'm not an invalid," Jensen grouses.

"You might as well be," Misha says. "Undead are nasty at the best of times, and that spectre would have killed you if it had hung on any longer. I'll get you back to normal in the morning."

"You'd better," Jensen says under his breath. Misha rolls his eyes and goes to talk with Jeff.

 

The first part of the night is quiet. Jared's on final watch, so he takes the opportunity to get close to Jensen again under their blankets. He deliberately set their beds up in the corner of the room, away from where the torches are burning and in as much darkness as he can find. Jensen doesn't say anything, just scoots back towards Jared when he lies down behind Jensen and pulls the blankets over them both.

Jared tries to be as quiet as he can as he slides his hand up Jensen's tunic, over the soft skin of his belly. It takes a great deal of effort not to whimper when Jensen arches his back and presses his ass against Jared's crotch. He latches his mouth onto Jensen's neck and sucks a heated kiss onto the warm skin, moving his hand in small circles over Jensen's stomach.

"Shh," Jared murmurs when Jensen gasps softly. Jensen's neck is quickly becoming Jared's favourite place—he can't see it properly in the darkness, but he knows that the constant exposure to the sun has left Jensen's pale skin tanned a warm golden brown and covered in a light dusting of freckles. The soft hair at the back of Jensen's head tickles Jared's nose as he nuzzles him, and he bites back a laugh.

"Do you want me to—" Jared says under his breath, cutting himself off and moving his hand down Jensen's body to rest against the waistband of his trousers. Jensen is silent, his breath quickening, and Jared plunges on ahead. "I've never done this before, but—but I'd like to—"

Jensen stills for a moment before twisting around in Jared's grasp to face him. "You've never done this?"

Jared shakes his head, blushing in the darkness. Jensen reaches up and lays a hand over Jared's cheek, stroking it briefly before leaning up to kiss him. "Okay," he says, and kisses Jared again. It's a kiss with intent, a firm meeting of mouths and tongues, and Jared falls into it, opening his mouth when he feels Jensen's tongue sliding gently against his lips. He thinks he could do this for hours, curled up in a warm, private nest under their blankets, but just as he's thinking he might try exploring a little with his hands, Jensen's mouth opens on a huge yawn.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," he mumbles, yawning again. "I'd really like to, but—Jared, I'm _exhausted_." Jared remembers belatedly that Jensen has been badly drained by the spectres, and he laughs softly at himself.

"That's okay," he says. "Save it for later, hmm?"

Jensen nods, his soft hair brushing Jared's face, and within seconds, he's fast asleep against Jared's chest. Jared places a kiss on the top of Jensen's head and curls himself further into Jensen's warmth before falling asleep himself.

 

They come across a forbidding archway, all black rock and warnings which Jim translates as, 'Death to all who enter!' and 'Turn back before it's too late!'. Jared is pretty sure Jim is paraphrasing the words.

"Of course we have to go through the dark, terrifying archway," Aldis says sarcastically. No one pays any attention to him, but Jared grips his axe tightly in his hands as they pass through. On the other side is a long, straight corridor leading slightly upwards. The thick dust on the floor speaks of countless years without anyone passing this way, but there is a faint glow coming from the door at the end. 

"I bet there are more undead through there," Aldis mutters.

"Aldis, _shut up_ ," Jensen says exasperatedly. "You're really not helping."

Aldis glares at him, but Jensen ignores him. As they get closer to the doorway at the end, Jared suddenly becomes aware of a faint humming noise. He's not the only one, and Jensen frowns. "That's magic," he says.

"Trapped?" Jeff asks when they get to the door. Aldis takes a look and shakes his head, but Jensen holds his hand up for a moment and mutters a short spell at the door.

"Spell trapped," he says a moment later. "Gimme a moment." Another quick spell later, and they're through. The humming hasn't stopped, though, and when they enter the room, Jared can see what's causing it.

In the centre of the room is a large pool of water. It's glowing faintly, accounting for the light they had seen from the corridor, and Jared can see the shining shapes of runes hovering over it. Around the room are more runes, inscribed deeply into the wall, each of them shining a little, and below the runes are crumpled, ancient bodies dressed in dark robes.

"Orcs," Jeff says after briefly examining one. "Been dead for centuries." Jared looks at one and finds that it's almost perfectly preserved in the ancient, dry air of the room. It's unnaturally dry, actually; when he breathes through his nose he feels a sting from all the water in the air being drawn slowly out. It's like the pool in the centre of the room is attracting every droplet of moisture from the air around it, and Jared approaches it curiously.

"Stay back," Jensen says sharply. "There's powerful magic here." He mutters a few words and a shimmering light surrounds him before he walks carefully to the edge of the pool and glances into it. "There's something in there," he says to himself and casts another spell. A ghostly hand appears in front of him for a moment before diving into the pool. Jensen screws his face up in concentration and a few moments later, the hand emerges holding a sword.

It's a burning sword, larger than the biggest sword Jared's ever seen, and the moment it leaves the water, it flares bright and hot.

"Oh," Jim breathes. "That's the sword of Haela Brightaxe." He reaches through the flames and grasps the handle, ignoring everyone's calls to wait. The flames don't seem to affect him, and he holds it reverently. "She was lost to us." Jim looks up at the rest of the party, a strange look on his face, and it takes a moment for Jared to realise that Jim's _smiling_.

"This entire room is part of a spell," Jensen says suddenly. He's been studying the runes on the wall, and he turns to face the rest of the party. "An anti-magic spell. It's focused on the pool. Whoever built this place was doing their best to destroy that sword."

"Destroy a God's weapon, and you destroy the God," Misha says quietly. "They were trying to kill Haela Brightaxe."

"She's not dead," Jim says. "If her sword is whole, she is still alive. These orcs—" he kicks one of the bodies, "—were probably supposed to be guarding this place."

"It must have been forgotten," Jared says. "How could they have forgotten something like this?"

"It probably became a myth over time." Misha looks at Jim. "How long has she been lost?"

"Generations," Jim says. "Over five hundred years."

"Is this what we came here for?" Jeff asks, and Jim shakes his head. "This way," he says, pointing to the far end of the chamber. It looks like a blank wall, but when Jim walks up to it holding the sword, it shimmers slightly and disappears, revealing another tunnel.

"More tunnels," Aldis groans. "You guys do realise that I am a lot smaller than you, and therefore can't walk as far or as fast?"

"Yes, we do," Jeff says distractedly. "You tell us every day." He follows Jim down the tunnel with Jared close behind. It's been worryingly easy to get this far, and Jared's pretty sure something huge and nasty will be waiting for them at the end of the tunnel.

They come to a giant room, lit by torches. Jared wheels around, looking for things to fight—no way those torches have been burning for hundreds of years—but Jensen places a calming hand on his shoulder. "They're magical torches," he points out. "Can burn forever if you use the right spell."

"Oh, okay," Jared says, and lowers his sword. The room is dominated by two giant stone figures in the centre—a dwarf and an orc. The dwarf is falling backwards, caught for eternity halfway to the floor, with a terrible axe buried in her chest. The axe is wielded by the orc figure, a snarl of victory on his face. 

"Haela Brightaxe," Misha murmurs as Jim falls to his knees. 

Jared's never encountered an actual God before, and he has no idea what to do except to stare in awe. He's not the only one; every member of the party is focusing all their attention on the stone figures, which is why no one notices two of the statues in the corners of the room coming to life until it's too late.

There's a scraping sound, and a grunt, and Jared turns to see Jensen slumped on the floor with a hideous stone gargoyle perched over him. Jensen is pale and bleeding, and Jared's vision turns red. He's charging before he's even aware of what's going on, and the gargoyle snarls at him, tossing Jensen's limp body aside to meet Jared's attack. Small pieces of stone chip off as Jared hacks and slices with his sword, but the creature is incredibly tough, and it takes all of Jared's strength and focus to take it down. By the end, he's panting and gasping for breath as the gargoyle lies in pieces on the floor. Jared glances around quickly to see that the other one has been taken down by the rest of the party before he drops his sword and falls to his knees beside Jensen.

"C'mon," he mutters, "it wasn't that nasty." Jensen's face is white and his clothing is soaked with blood, and Jared's vision blurs with tears as he seeks out Jensen's hand and holds it tightly until Misha gets there. 

"Damn," Misha says quietly after taking a look at Jensen's wounds, and sits back on his heels.

"What are you doing?" Jared snaps. "Heal him!"

"Jared, I can't," Misha says quietly. Jared stares at him in horror before turning back to Jensen and suddenly realising that the hand he is holding has gone limp. Jensen's eyes are blank, and his body is still.

"No," Jared mutters. "No, no, this isn't _fair!_ "

"Jared," Misha begins, but Jared isn't listening. He pats Jensen's face frantically, rubs his hand, tries to believe that it's okay, Jensen's going to be fine. " _Jared!_ " Misha says, more loudly, and Jared spins around to glare at him.

"What? Dammit, Misha—"

"I can bring him back," Misha says slowly, as if he's talking to a child. "I can Resurrect him."

"What?" Jared frowns. "You can make him better?"

"Of course," Misha says, rubbing his face. "I'm a cleric. It's what we do."

"Then do it!"

"I can't, not at the moment." Misha holds up a hand to prevent Jared from interrupting him. "I don't have the spell. But I can get it from a temple. We'll take his body back to Riverton, bring him to the Temple of Pelor, and he'll be fine."

Jared sits back. "Oh."

"Jared," Misha says, his voice more gentle. Jared looks at him, trying to blink back the tears. "It's going to be okay."

"Okay," Jared says in a small voice. He places Jensen's hand beside his body, patting it gently before standing up to see what's going on with the giant statues. No one seems to know what to do now that they're here; how does one bring a God back to life?

"Records are a bit hazy on that," Misha says evasively when Jared asks him, which Jared takes to mean that Misha doesn't actually know. 

"I think—" Jim says slowly and, seemingly without thought, places the flaming sword in the outstretched hand of the Haela Brightaxe. The effect is instantaneous. Colour flashes through the dwarf, swiftly changing stone to flesh and death to life. She grasps the sword tightly and thrusts it at the orc, upon whose stone face there is abruptly a look of shock and fear. It can't move, though; suspended in eternal battle with the dwarf God, it is unable to react to her sudden return to life. There is a terrible grinding and a shriek of metal on stone as she stabs the sword through its chest, and it falls to the ground, the axe in Haela Brightaxe's chest dissolving into dust as its wielder smashes into a thousand pieces.

The room is filled with motes of dust, shining in the light of the unnatural torches. Haela Brightaxe glows faintly for a moment, and Jared is sure he sees her smile at Jim before there is a blinding flash of light and she vanishes.

Silence fills the room, broken only by the sound of Jim laughing softly.

 

The journey back to the surface is quiet and reflective. Jared has to tell himself over and over that Jensen's going to be fine, that once they get back to town, Misha will be able to bring him back. But every time he glances back to see Jensen's wrapped body tied ignobly across Bill Two's back, he feels a stab of despair. He's amazed at how quickly Jensen had gone from being an annoyingly weak wizard to someone Jared feels incredibly close to. Every night, Jared misses the sound of Jensen breathing nearby, misses being able to curl up next to the warmth of Jensen's body. When they encounter resistance, Jared fights mechanically, without really paying attention to what he is killing or the wounds he receives.

They don't go back the same way they came; Jim leads them through strange underground passages and they have no choice but to follow him. He assures them that they'll come out closer to Riverton than if they went back the way they came, and Jared just puts his head down and leads Bill Two through the endless corridors.

It's several days before Jared suddenly catches a breath of air that isn't stale and dry. He can smell grass and water, and he looks up to see a glimpse of sunlight not too far ahead. "It's so bright," he murmurs as the party breathes a sigh of relief. Everyone has a spring in their step, and Jared's not the only one whose pace quickens. 

They come out in a cave looking down on a grassy valley. It's early evening, for which Jared is very grateful—even the dim light of the recently-set sun hurts his eyes after so many days underground. 

"Where are we?" Aldis asks.

"Ask me in the morning," Jeff says, falling to his knees in the grass and laughing softly.

 

It turns out that they're only two days walk from Riverton. Jared's impatient the entire way, wishing for the first time that they were riding horses—they would cover the distance in half the time. 

"You love him, don't you?" Misha asks quietly as they walk. Jared's walking at the back of the group with Jensen and Bill Two, and Misha had dropped back to join him.

"Yeah," Jared says, looking at the ground and blushing slightly.

"Thought so," Misha says. "I'm pretty sure he feels the same, y'know."

Jared glances at Misha and frowns. "Yeah, I know," he says. He's not entirely sure what Misha wants, and he resumes glaring at the ground as they walk.

"Oh. Okay." Misha is silent for a while, and when Jared looks back at him, he sees that he's smiling. "What's funny?" Jared asks, and Misha just smiles wider and pats him on the back. Jared's honestly confused; he'd been pretty certain that everyone in the party knew what was going on. It was hard to miss, what with the kissing and the sleeping close together. 

Jared's even more eager to get going the next day; Jeff is certain that they will get to Riverton late that afternoon and Jared is on the verge of grabbing Bill Two's lead and just running on ahead.

"Be patient," Misha says in his annoyingly calm way when they stop for lunch. "He'll be back with you by tonight, I promise."

"Stop being so logical!" Jared snaps, with a little more heat than he had intended. Misha just stares at him, though, a slight smile on his face and a knowing look in his eyes.

"What's wrong with you?" Aldis asks, and Jared has to resist the urge to hit him. "I mean, I know your lover boy is temporarily out of action, but it's not like he's never coming back."

"You wouldn't understand," Jared mutters.

"Try me."

"I—I don't know!" Jared blurts out. "I know he's coming back, I do, but I keep seeing him dead and _dying_. And I was supposed to protect him. And I have spent the past five days with his body, all wrapped up in tent cloth, and— and—"

"Go _away_ , Aldis," he hears Misha say firmly, and he finds himself sitting by the side of the road with Misha's arm around him and his face buried in Misha's shoulder. 

"Sorry," he mutters, his body shaking with the effort of holding himself together.

"Don't be," Misha says. "Aldis is an ass. You're doing pretty well, considering."

"Thanks." Jared wipes his face with his sleeve and stands up. "We must be almost there."

"We are," Jeff says. "I recognise this road; we're about an hour away. No, wait, hey—" he adds, backing away from Jared, who ignores Jeff's protests and wraps him up in a hug. "Ugh, your armour _stinks_ ," Jeff grumbles when Jared lets him go, but he's smiling.

 

"Can I come to the temple with you?" Jared asks once they finally get back to Riverton. 

"If you want," Misha says. "The rest of you might as well find an inn."

"We'll go back to the Red Dragon," Jeff says. "See you there soon."

The Temple of Pelor is in the centre of Riverton, and it's late afternoon by the time they get there. Misha makes Jared wait impatiently in an antechamber while he talks with the other clerics, and he twiddles his thumbs nervously when the clerics take Jensen's body into the infirmary.

"Keep waiting out here," Misha says when Jared tries to follow.

"Why?" Jared says, frustrated.

"Because Jensen's been dead for a few days," Misha says bluntly. "He's not going to be in a very good condition when we unwrap him."

"Oh!" Jared sits down on a stool just outside the room. Misha's right; he probably doesn't want to see that.

It seems to take forever. Jared's on the verge of bursting through the door out of sheer frustration when it finally opens. 

"Did it work?" Jared asks Misha, who frowns.

"Of course it worked," he says. "Oh ye of little faith, Jared."

Jared ignores Misha and pushes past him into the infirmary. His eyes immediately go to Jensen, who's sitting up on one of the beds, wrapped up in a loose-fitting white gown.

"Jensen!" Jared calls, and Jensen looks at him as he rushes over. "Oh, hi," he says calmly, then wrinkles his nose. "Look at the state of my clothes. I'm never going to get the smell of death out of them. I might as well—"

"Damn, Jensen, just shut up," Jared interrupts, and stops Jensen from speaking the best way he knows how.

"Oh—okay," Jensen mumbles, and kisses him back. It goes on for a while—Jared's seriously considering pushing Jensen down on this narrow bed and having his way with him—but after not nearly enough time, Jensen puts his hands on Jared's shoulders and pushes him back gently. "Maybe we should leave the Temple of Pelor," he suggests, his eyes gleaming, and Jared nods. Jensen's smile fades into a frown, though, and he touches Jared's cheek. "What's wrong?" he asks, and Jared realises that he's crying.

"You were dead," Jared says. "All pale and bleeding, and then cold and—"

"But surely you knew that Misha would bring me back," Jensen points out.

"Why does everyone think that logic is the answer here?" Jared asks. "You were dead! _Dead!_ I got upset!"

"Okay, okay," Jensen says, his hands warm on Jared's. "I'm sorry. I'm okay, see?"

"Yeah," Jared says, his voice rough. "I do." He's vaguely aware of the clerics leaving them alone, but his attention is almost entirely focused on wrapping his arms around Jensen and pulling him close.

 

Jared can't keep his hands off Jensen's body; after days of it being wrapped up and cold, he can't get enough of the warm, smooth skin he's allowed to touch as much as he wants. Jared is tentative and unsure, but everything he does makes Jensen groan, makes him whimper and beg Jared to _keep going, keep doing that_. He's only vaguely aware of the sounds of the inn's common room filtering up to their tiny room; his attention is otherwise occupied.

At first Jared was wary of crushing Jensen's slender form underneath his oversized body, but Jensen had simply wrapped his legs around Jared's waist and tugged him down on top of him. Jared's hair falls in his face as they kiss, but he barely notices, completely focused on Jensen's mouth, his lips, his tongue sending ripples of fire through him. 

"Thought you'd never done this before," Jensen pants, arching his body under Jared's, heated skin sliding together, slick with sweat.

"Haven't," Jared replies, grinning down at him. They kiss again, harder, their bodies moving in tandem on the narrow bed.

At some point Jared finds himself on his back with Jensen straddling him, pale skin almost glowing in the dim light as he leans over Jared and moves atop him. It's an incredible sight, and Jared runs his hands over Jensen's chest, groaning at the heat between them. 

Later, they lie tangled in the blankets, Jensen sprawled out across Jared's chest where he had collapsed, satiated. Jensen seems to be almost asleep, but Jared's wide awake, tracing his fingers over Jensen's shoulders and arms.

"It's gone," he says suddenly.

"Hmm?" Jensen doesn't move, doesn't open his eyes.

"The brand on your shoulder, from the bear. It's gone."

"So have the rest of my scars," Jensen mumbles. "It's a Resurrection thing."

Jared frowns, thinking about that. "So... if I die and get Resurrected, I won't have any of my scars?" Jared _likes_ his scars. Each one has a story behind it, from the gash across his right shoulder where a were-jackal got him, to the oddly-shaped marks on his hips from a too-close encounter with something that had more tentacles than Jared could easily count.

Jensen looks up at him with bleary eyes. "Don't die, then. From what I've seen, that shouldn't be too hard a task for you."

"I'll try," Jared says, grinning. Jensen looks at him suspiciously for a moment before eventually nodding and resting his head back down on Jared's chest.

Sleep is a really good idea, Jared thinks. He tugs the blanket half covering Jensen up higher and closes his eyes.

 

"We have to take care of _what_?" Aldis says, sounding horrified.

"Zombies," Jeff repeats.

"But—"

"They're undead, we have to kill them," Misha interrupts, his eyes alight with holy fervour. Jared suspects that Misha actually looks forward to encountering undead just so he can smite them.

"Suits me," Jim rumbles. Aldis glares at him. "Of course it suits you!" he complains. "You get to hit things with your axe! And don't you even start!"

"What?" Jared says, surprised. Aldis had directed that last part at him with a dreadful glare on his face. Jared had almost taken a step backwards; Aldis is very small, and when he gets angry it's usually more adorable than scary, but right then, he'd been pretty intimidating.

"I need to stop by the college to get some new spells before we go," Jensen says. 

"They're just zombies, Aldis," Jared says, trying to be logical.

"I hate zombies!"

"We _know_ ," Jensen says sarcastically, rolling his eyes at Jared and grinning.

"They're paying us three hundred gold pieces per head," Jeff says, and Aldis stops mid-tirade.

"Three hundred?" he asks, and Jeff nods. "And how many did they say there are?"

"Probably dozens. There's a huge infestation of them near Greenville, two days east of here."

Aldis is silent for a moment, and Jared can see Jensen trying desperately not to laugh. "Okay. Right. I guess—well. Fine. Zombies."

"I'll stock up on Restoration spells, then," Misha says.

"Zombies are _awesome_ ," Jared whispers to Jensen as they head up to their room to start packing. They've only been in town for two days, and while Jared had relished the two days spent getting to know Jensen even better than before, he's glad to be getting out on the road again. 

"You're _weird_ ," Jensen says, looking askance at Jared.

"Hey, it's going to be an adventure!" Jared replies, picking Jensen up by the waist and spinning him around. Jensen yells and tries to hit him, but it's only a few seconds before he gives in and laughs along with Jared.


End file.
